head to head · open source
dagger vs task
dagger has 16,261 GitHub stars, 924 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped yesterday. task has 16,157 stars, 910 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dagger leads on adoption by 1% (16,261 vs 16,157 stars). dagger is written in Go under Apache-2.0; task is written in Go under MIT. dagger has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, task 6%. dagger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (devops), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | task | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 924 | ⑂ 910 |
| 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 task if
- You want the task feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and task 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 task
Task is a fast, cross platform task runner and build tool, written in Go and inspired by Make, for developers and DevOps engineers who want to define and run project commands without maintaining a hand written Makefile.
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Frequently asked questions
Is dagger or task more popular?
dagger has 16,261 GitHub stars and task has 16,157. dagger has the larger community by that measure.
Are dagger and task free?
Both are open source. dagger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and task under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between dagger and task?
dagger is written in Go and task in Go. 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 task?
Choose dagger if you want the larger community (16,261 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose task if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.