head to head · open source
Harness vs jenkins
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins has 26,719 stars, 9,819 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harness leads on adoption by 45% (38,798 vs 26,719 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; jenkins is written in Java under MIT. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, jenkins 37%. Harness was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (continuous-delivery, 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 | jenkins | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 27K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 9.8K |
| 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 jenkins if
- You want the jenkins feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and jenkins 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 jenkins
Table of Contents About What to Use Jenkins for and When to Use It Downloads Getting Started (Development) Source Contributing to Jenkins News and Website Governance Adopters License About In a nutshell, Jenkins is the leading open source automation server. Built with Java, it provides over 2,000 plugins to support automating virtually anything, so that humans can spend their time doing things machines cannot. What to Use Jenkins for and When to Use It Use Jenkins to automate your development workflow, so you can focus on work that matters most. Jenkins is commonly used for: Building projects Running tests to…
read the full jenkins overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or jenkins more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and jenkins has 26,719. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and jenkins free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and jenkins under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and jenkins?
Harness is written in Go and jenkins 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, Harness or jenkins?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose jenkins if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.