head to head · open source
Harness vs proguard
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. proguard has 3,690 stars, 486 forks, 176 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Harness leads on adoption by 951% (38,798 vs 3,690 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; proguard is written in Java under GPL-2.0. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, proguard 13%. 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 | proguard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 486 |
| 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 proguard if
- You want the proguard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and proguard 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 proguard
Quick Start • Features • Contributing • License ProGuard is a free shrinker, optimizer, obfuscator, and preverifier for Java bytecode: It detects and removes unused classes, fields, methods, and attributes. It optimizes bytecode and removes unused instructions. It renames the remaining classes, fields, and methods using short meaningless names. The resulting applications and libraries are smaller and faster. ❓ Getting Help Please use the issue tracker to report actual bugs 🐛, crashes , etc. 🚀 Quick Start Command line First, download the latest release from GitHub releases. To run ProGuard, on Linux/MacOS, just…
read the full proguard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or proguard more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and proguard has 3,690. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and proguard free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and proguard under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and proguard?
Harness is written in Go and proguard 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 proguard?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose proguard if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.