head to head · open source
Harness vs bazel-remote
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. bazel-remote has 787 stars, 213 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. Harness leads on adoption by 4,830% (38,798 vs 787 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; bazel-remote is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, bazel-remote 27%. Harness 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
| Harness | bazel-remote | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 787 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 213 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harness if
- You weight community size — 39K 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 bazel-remote if
- You want the bazel-remote 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 bazel-remote fits your workflow better
About Harness
Harness Harness Open Source is an open source development platform packed with the power of code hosting, automated DevOps pipelines, hosted development environments (Gitspaces), and artifact registries. Overview Harness Open source is an open source development platform packed with the power of code hosting, automated DevOps pipelines, Gitspaces, and artifact registries. Running Harness locally The latest publicly released docker image can be found on harness/harness. To install Harness yourself, simply run the command below. Once the container is up, you can visit in your browser. The Harness image uses a…
read the full Harness overview →
About bazel-remote
bazel remote cache bazel remote is a HTTP/1.1 and gRPC server that is intended to be used as a remote build cache for REAPI clients like Bazel or as a component of a remote execution service. The cache contents are stored in a directory on disk with a maximum cache size, and bazel remote will automatically enforce this limit as needed, by deleting the least recently used files. S3, GCS and experimental Azure blob storage proxy backends are also supported. Note that while bazel remote is consumable as a go module, we provide no guarantees on the stability or backwards compatibility of the APIs. We do attempt to…
read the full bazel-remote overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or bazel-remote more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and bazel-remote has 787. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and bazel-remote free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bazel-remote under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and bazel-remote?
Harness is written in Go and bazel-remote 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, Harness or bazel-remote?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bazel-remote if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.