head to head · open source
Harness vs haskell.nix
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haskell.nix has 634 stars, 270 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harness leads on adoption by 6,020% (38,798 vs 634 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; haskell.nix is written in Nix under Apache-2.0. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, haskell.nix 43%. Harness 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
| Harness | haskell.nix | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 634 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Nix |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 270 |
| 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 haskell.nix if
- You want the haskell.nix feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Nix
- You evaluated both and haskell.nix 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 haskell.nix
haskell.nix is infrastructure for building Haskell packages with Nix haskell.nix can automatically translate your Cabal or Stack project and its dependencies into Nix code. Documentation Introduction Getting Started Troubleshooting Explore the documentation from there to find further topics. Help! Something isn't working The 1 problem that people have when using haskell.nix is that they find themselves building GHC. This should not happen, but you must follow the haskell.nix setup instructions properly to avoid it. If you find this happening to you, please check that you have followed the getting started…
read the full haskell.nix overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or haskell.nix more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and haskell.nix has 634. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and haskell.nix free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and haskell.nix under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and haskell.nix?
Harness is written in Go and haskell.nix in Nix. 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 haskell.nix?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose haskell.nix if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.