head to head · open source
Harness vs sbt
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sbt has 4,953 stars, 1,053 forks, 498 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Harness leads on adoption by 683% (38,798 vs 4,953 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; sbt is written in Scala under Apache-2.0. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, sbt 21%. 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 | sbt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 sbt if
- You want the sbt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and sbt 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 sbt
[sbt/sbt zero seven]: [CONTRIBUTING]: CONTRIBUTING.md [contributing docs]: contributing docs/README.md [Setup]: [FAQ]: [sbt dev]: [searching]: [asking]: [LICENSE]: LICENSE [sbt/io]: [sbt/zinc]: [sbt/sbt]: sbt === sbt is a build tool for Scala, Java, and more. For general documentation, see sbt 2.x This is the 2.x series of sbt. The source code of sbt is split across several GitHub repositories, including this one. [sbt/io][sbt/io] hosts sbt.io module. [sbt/zinc][sbt/zinc] hosts Zinc, an incremental compiler for Scala. [sbt/sbt][sbt/sbt], this repository hosts modules that implement the build tool. Other links…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or sbt more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and sbt has 4,953. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and sbt free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sbt under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and sbt?
Harness is written in Go and sbt in Scala. 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 sbt?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sbt if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.