head to head · open source
Harness vs piku
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. piku has 6,603 stars, 157 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Harness leads on adoption by 488% (38,798 vs 6,603 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; piku is written in Python under MIT. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, piku 2%. 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 | piku | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 157 |
| 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 piku if
- You want the piku feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and piku 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 piku
piku , inspired by dokku , allows you do git push deployments to your own servers, no matter how small they are. Demo Documentation: Install Using Procfile ENV Examples Roadmap Contributing LinuxConf Talk Fast Web App Tutorial Discussion Forum Note to security “researchers” please stop submitting fake, AI generated SSH ”vulnerabilities” and begging for CVEs to boost your credibility. We know piku allows you to run arbitrary commands (it is actually a CLI feature), and you are just wasting our time. Use AI to improve this instead. Install TL;DR: There are also other installation methods available, including cloud…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or piku more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and piku has 6,603. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and piku free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and piku under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and piku?
Harness is written in Go and piku 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 piku?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose piku if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.