head to head · open source
Harness vs cake
Harness has 38,378 GitHub stars, 3,397 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. cake has 4,191 stars, 778 forks, 247 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Harness leads on adoption by 816% (38,378 vs 4,191 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; cake is written in C# under MIT. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, cake 19%. Harness was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (build-automation, continuous-integration, 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
| Harness | cake | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 4.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 778 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harness if
- You weight community size — 38K 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 cake if
- You want the cake feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and cake fits your workflow better
About Harness
Harness Open Source is an Apache 2.0, Go based developer platform that combines Git source control management, CI/CD pipelines, Gitspaces hosted development environments and artifact registries into one self hostable system for engineering teams that want end to end software delivery without stitching four separate products together.
read the full Harness overview →
About cake
Cake, called C Make, is cross platform build automation system. It lives in .NET ecosystem. It lets developers write build logic in C . That logic can compile code, copy files and folders, run unit tests, compress files, build NuGet packages. Project is MIT licensed C software. It provides Cake .NET Tool, Cake Frosting, Cake SDK packages.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or cake more popular?
Harness has 38,378 GitHub stars and cake has 4,191. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and cake free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cake under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and cake?
Harness is written in Go and cake in C#. 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 cake?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,378 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cake if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.