head to head · open source
dagger vs aws-cdk
dagger has 16,261 GitHub stars, 924 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped yesterday. aws-cdk has 12,899 stars, 4,631 forks, 2,863 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dagger leads on adoption by 26% (16,261 vs 12,899 stars). dagger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; aws-cdk is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. dagger has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, aws-cdk 36%. dagger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| dagger | aws-cdk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 924 | ⑂ 4.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick dagger if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick aws-cdk if
- You want the aws-cdk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and aws-cdk fits your workflow better
About dagger
Dagger is an open source automation engine for software delivery, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It builds, tests and ships any codebase, and it runs locally, inside a CI server, or directly in the cloud. The project lives in the cloud infrastructure and CI/CD ecosystem, where it occupies the space normally filled by shell scripts and proprietary pipeline YAML. It has been developed for roughly seven years and carries a substantial community footprint, with more than sixteen thousand stars and over nine hundred forks on GitHub.
read the full dagger overview →
About aws-cdk
AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open source software development framework for defining cloud infrastructure in code and provisioning it through AWS CloudFormation. It lives in the AWS ecosystem and ships under the Apache 2.0 license, with the core implementation written in TypeScript. The framework offers a high level object oriented abstraction that lets developers define AWS resources imperatively using modern programming languages rather than writing raw CloudFormation templates by hand.
read the full aws-cdk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is dagger or aws-cdk more popular?
dagger has 16,261 GitHub stars and aws-cdk has 12,899. dagger has the larger community by that measure.
Are dagger and aws-cdk free?
Both are open source. dagger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and aws-cdk under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between dagger and aws-cdk?
dagger is written in Go and aws-cdk in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, dagger or aws-cdk?
Choose dagger if you want the larger community (16,261 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose aws-cdk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.