head to head · open source
huginn vs hertzbeat
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars, 4,339 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hertzbeat has 7,451 stars, 1,370 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped yesterday. huginn leads on adoption by 575% (50,269 vs 7,451 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; hertzbeat is written in Java under Apache-2.0. huginn has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, hertzbeat 18%. huginn was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (agent, monitoring, notifications), 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
| huginn | hertzbeat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick huginn if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick hertzbeat if
- You want the hertzbeat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and hertzbeat fits your workflow better
About huginn
What is Huginn? Huginn is a system for building agents that perform automated tasks for you online. They can read the web, watch for events, and take actions on your behalf. Huginn's Agents create and consume events, propagating them along a directed graph. Think of it as a hackable version of IFTTT or Zapier on your own server. You always know who has your data. You do. Here are some of the things that you can do with Huginn: Track the weather and get an email when it's going to rain (or snow) tomorrow ("Don't forget your umbrella!") List terms that you care about and receive email when their occurrence on…
read the full huginn overview →
About hertzbeat
Readme : English 中文 日本語 Home: hertzbeat.apache.org Email: Mail to dev subscribe@hertzbeat.apache.org to subscribe mailing lists 🎡 Introduction Apache HertzBeat™ is an AI powered next generation open source real time observability system. Unified metrics and logs collection, centralized alerting distribution, intelligent management and analysis. No Agent required, high performance cluster, provides powerful custom monitoring and status page building capabilities. Features Integrates collection + analysis + alerting + notification into one platform, with new AI powered interactions and features under HertzBeat…
read the full hertzbeat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is huginn or hertzbeat more popular?
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars and hertzbeat has 7,451. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and hertzbeat free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT and hertzbeat under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between huginn and hertzbeat?
huginn is written in Ruby and hertzbeat in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, huginn or hertzbeat?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (50,269 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose hertzbeat if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.