head to head · open source
Harness vs Rivet
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Rivet has 6,556 stars, 295 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harness leads on adoption by 492% (38,798 vs 6,556 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Rivet is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Rivet 4%. Rivet 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 | Rivet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 295 |
| 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 Rivet if
- You want the Rivet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Rivet 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 Rivet
Rivet Actors are the primitive for stateful workloads. Built for AI agents, collaborative apps, and durable execution. Quickstart • Documentation • Changelog • Discord • X What is Rivet? Rivet Actors are long running, lightweight processes designed for stateful workloads. State lives in memory with automatic persistence. Create one per agent, per session, or per user — with built in workflows, queues, and scheduling. Backend Client (frontend or backend) Features One Actor per agent, per session, per user — state, storage, and networking included. Rivet provides: In memory state — Co located with compute for…
read the full Rivet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or Rivet more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and Rivet has 6,556. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and Rivet free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Rivet under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and Rivet?
Harness is written in Go and Rivet in Rust. 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 Rivet?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Rivet if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.