head to head · open source
jenkins vs chef
jenkins has 26,559 GitHub stars, 9,834 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped today. chef has 8,238 stars, 2,519 forks, 411 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 222% (26,559 vs 8,238 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; chef is written in Ruby under Apache-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, chef 31%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (devops, hacktoberfest), 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 | chef | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 8.2K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| 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 chef if
- You want the chef feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and chef 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 chef
Chef Infra configuration management tool for automating infrastructure configuration, deployment, and management across any environment, at any scale, for DevOps engineers and infrastructure teams.
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or chef more popular?
jenkins has 26,559 GitHub stars and chef has 8,238. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and chef free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and chef under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and chef?
jenkins is written in Java and chef in Ruby. 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 chef?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose chef if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.