head to head · open source
Harness vs Stormkit
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Stormkit has 266 stars, 19 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harness leads on adoption by 14,486% (38,798 vs 266 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Stormkit is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Stormkit 7%. Harness was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ci-cd, 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 | Stormkit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 266 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 19 |
| 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 Stormkit if
- You want the Stormkit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Stormkit 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 Stormkit
Stormkit Deploy your app and get the pieces it needs — a Postgres database, end user authentication, a transactional mailer, scheduled jobs and analytics — on infrastructure you own. That is a working Stormkit on your own server: git push to deploy, a preview URL per branch, custom domains with automatic TLS. What you get Let an agent run it Stormkit exposes the whole platform over MCP, so a coding agent can provision a server, deploy, publish and read the logs when something breaks — without you opening the dashboard. The agent install is hands off: give it an SSH key and it provisions the instance, creates the…
read the full Stormkit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or Stormkit more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and Stormkit has 266. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and Stormkit free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Stormkit has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Harness and Stormkit?
Harness is written in Go and Stormkit in Go. 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 Stormkit?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Stormkit if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.