head to head · open source
Harness vs tau
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars, 3,451 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tau has 5,182 stars, 234 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Harness leads on adoption by 649% (38,798 vs 5,182 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; tau is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, tau 5%. 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 | tau | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 5.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 234 |
| 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 tau if
- You want the tau feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tau 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 tau
Development Environment Build Your Application Deploy and Run Quick Start Run Locally The quickest way to try Taubyte is to spin up a local environment with dream → Deploy Deploy Taubyte to your own Servers and/or VMs: Manual deployment → Automated deployment with Spore Drive → Prefer Video? Check out the Hitchhiker's Guide to Taubyte for guided walkthroughs and demos: Staying ahead Star us on GitHub and be instantly notified of new releases. Contributing Tau thrives with your help. Fix bugs, add features, improve docs, or guide the community. How to contribute Fork → branch from main → make changes → test →…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or tau more popular?
Harness has 38,798 GitHub stars and tau has 5,182. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and tau free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tau under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and tau?
Harness is written in Go and tau 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 tau?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,798 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tau if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.