head to head · open source
Harness vs Woodpecker CI
Harness has 38,378 GitHub stars, 3,397 forks, 106 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Woodpecker CI has 7,886 stars, 679 forks, 371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Harness leads on adoption by 387% (38,378 vs 7,886 stars). Harness is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Woodpecker CI is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Harness has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Woodpecker CI 9%. Woodpecker CI was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ci, 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 | Woodpecker CI | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 7.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 679 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harness if
- You weight community size — 38K 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 Woodpecker CI if
- You want the Woodpecker CI feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Woodpecker CI fits your workflow better
About Harness
Harness Open Source is an Apache 2.0, Go based developer platform that combines Git source control management, CI/CD pipelines, Gitspaces hosted development environments and artifact registries into one self hostable system for engineering teams that want end to end software delivery without stitching four separate products together.
read the full Harness overview →
About Woodpecker CI
Woodpecker CI is a continuous integration and continuous delivery engine written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the developer tooling ecosystem around build and deployment automation, and it is distributed as a self hostable server plus one or more agents that execute pipeline work. The project describes itself as a simple, yet powerful CI/CD engine with great extensibility, and it is catalogued under topics such as automation, ci, cicd, devops, docker, and kubernetes. Its documentation and plugin directory are hosted at woodpecker ci.org.
read the full Woodpecker CI overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harness or Woodpecker CI more popular?
Harness has 38,378 GitHub stars and Woodpecker CI has 7,886. Harness has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harness and Woodpecker CI free?
Both are open source. Harness is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Woodpecker CI under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harness and Woodpecker CI?
Harness is written in Go and Woodpecker CI 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 Woodpecker CI?
Choose Harness if you want the larger community (38,378 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Woodpecker CI if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.