head to head · open source
wtf vs dagger
wtf has 17,093 GitHub stars, 864 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. dagger has 16,261 stars, 924 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped yesterday. wtf leads on adoption by 5% (17,093 vs 16,261 stars). wtf is written in Go under MPL-2.0; dagger is written in Go under Apache-2.0. wtf has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, dagger 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
| wtf | dagger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 16K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-02 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 864 | ⑂ 924 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick wtf if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dagger if
- You want the dagger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dagger fits your workflow better
About wtf
WTF (also known as wtfutil) is a free, open source personal information dashboard that runs in the terminal, built for developers and technical people who want at a glance access to important but infrequently consulted data without leaving the command line.
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is wtf or dagger more popular?
wtf has 17,093 GitHub stars and dagger has 16,261. wtf has the larger community by that measure.
Are wtf and dagger free?
Both are open source. wtf is licensed under MPL-2.0 and dagger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between wtf and dagger?
wtf is written in Go and dagger 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, wtf or dagger?
Choose wtf if you want the larger community (17,093 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose dagger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.