head to head · open source
jenkins vs cds
jenkins has 26,559 GitHub stars, 9,834 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped today. cds has 4,843 stars, 453 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 448% (26,559 vs 4,843 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; cds is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, cds 9%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (continuous-delivery, continuous-deployment, continuous-integration, devops), 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
| jenkins | cds | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 453 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick jenkins if
- You weight community size — 27K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cds if
- You want the cds 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 cds fits your workflow better
About jenkins
Jenkins is an open source automation server built with Java and released under the MIT license. It lives in the continuous integration and continuous delivery ecosystem, where it has served as a central automation hub for roughly sixteen years. The project is developed in the open on GitHub, where it has accumulated 26,546 stars and 9,833 forks, and it is distributed through the official jenkins.io website alongside documentation, plugin listings, and release notes. Two release lines are maintained: a weekly line that carries all new features, improvements, and bug fixes, and a Long Term Support line that receive…
read the full jenkins overview →
About cds
CDS is an open source, enterprise grade continuous delivery and DevOps automation platform written in Go, for teams that build, run and own their own CI/CD workflows and want to script and scale them without depending on a hosted vendor.
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or cds more popular?
jenkins has 26,559 GitHub stars and cds has 4,843. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and cds free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and cds under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and cds?
jenkins is written in Java and cds 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, jenkins or cds?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cds if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.