head to head · open source
Harness vs paasta
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. paasta has 1,732 stars, 250 forks, 112 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Harness leads on adoption by 2,140% (38,798 vs 1,732 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; paasta is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, paasta 14%. Harness was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (docker), 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 | paasta | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 250 |
| 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 paasta if
- You want the paasta feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and paasta 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 paasta
PaaSTA Build, Deploy, Connect, and Monitor Services PaaSTA is a highly available, distributed system for building, deploying, and running services using containers and Kubernetes. PaaSTA has been running production services at Yelp since 2016. It was originally designed to run on top of Apache Mesos but has subsequently been updated to use Kubernetes. Over time the features and functionality that PaaSTA provides have increased but the principal design remains the same. PaaSTA aims to take a declarative description of the services that teams need to run and then ensures that those services are deployed safely…
read the full paasta overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or paasta more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and paasta has 1,732. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and paasta free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and paasta under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and paasta?
Harness is written in Go and paasta in Python. 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 paasta?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose paasta if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.