head to head · open source
Harness vs devbox
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. devbox has 12,440 stars, 364 forks, 466 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Harness leads on adoption by 212% (38,798 vs 12,440 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; devbox is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, devbox 3%. 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 | devbox | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 364 |
| 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 devbox if
- You want the devbox 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 devbox 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 devbox
Devbox Instant, easy, and predictable development environments What is it? Devbox is a command line tool that lets you easily create isolated shells for development. You start by defining the list of packages required by your development environment, and devbox uses that definition to create an isolated environment just for your application. In practice, Devbox works similar to a package manager like yarn – except the packages it manages are at the operating system level (the sort of thing you would normally install with brew or apt get ). With Devbox, you can install over 400,000 package versions from the Nix…
read the full devbox overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or devbox more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and devbox has 12,440. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and devbox free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and devbox under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and devbox?
Harness is written in Go and devbox 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 devbox?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose devbox if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.