head to head · open source
gitleaks vs Kestra
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars, 2,330 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. Kestra has 30,122 stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gitleaks leads on adoption by 2% (30,603 vs 30,122 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Kestra 12%. Kestra was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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
| gitleaks | Kestra | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 30K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gitleaks if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Kestra if
- You want the Kestra feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and Kestra fits your workflow better
About gitleaks
Gitleaks [!WARNING] Gitleaks is feature complete. I'm not merging new features into Gitleaks. Future releases will be security patches only. I'm shifting my focus to Betterleaks [license]: ./LICENSE [badge license]: [go docs badge]: [go docs]: [badge build]: [build]: [go report card badge]: [go report card]: [dockerhub]: [dockerhub badge]: [gitleaks action]: [gitleaks badge]: [![GitHub Action Test][badge build]][build] [![Docker Hub][dockerhub badge]][dockerhub] [![Gitleaks Action][gitleaks badge]][gitleaks action] [![GoDoc][go docs badge]][go docs] [![GoReportCard][go report card badge]][go report card]…
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About Kestra
Open source orchestration platform for data, AI, and infrastructure workflows Click on the image to learn how to get started with Kestra in 3 minutes. 🌟 What is Kestra? Kestra is an open source, event driven orchestration platform for data, AI, and infrastructure workflows. It unifies scheduled and event driven automation behind a declarative, language agnostic interface. By bringing Infrastructure as Code best practices to your data, process, and microservice pipelines, you can build reliable workflows directly from the UI in just a few lines of YAML, let the built in AI Copilot write them for you, or generate…
read the full Kestra overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or Kestra more popular?
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars and Kestra has 30,122. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and Kestra free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and Kestra under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and Kestra?
gitleaks is written in Go and Kestra in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, gitleaks or Kestra?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (30,603 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Kestra if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.