head to head · open source
jenkins vs crossplane
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars, 9,819 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crossplane has 12,222 stars, 1,289 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 119% (26,719 vs 12,222 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; crossplane is written in Go under Apache-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, crossplane 11%. crossplane 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| jenkins | crossplane | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 crossplane if
- You want the crossplane 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 crossplane fits your workflow better
About jenkins
Table of Contents About What to Use Jenkins for and When to Use It Downloads Getting Started (Development) Source Contributing to Jenkins News and Website Governance Adopters License About In a nutshell, Jenkins is the leading open source automation server. Built with Java, it provides over 2,000 plugins to support automating virtually anything, so that humans can spend their time doing things machines cannot. What to Use Jenkins for and When to Use It Use Jenkins to automate your development workflow, so you can focus on work that matters most. Jenkins is commonly used for: Building projects Running tests to…
read the full jenkins overview →
About crossplane
Crossplane is a framework for building cloud native control planes without needing to write code. It has a highly extensible backend that enables you to build a control plane that can orchestrate applications and infrastructure no matter where they run, and a highly configurable frontend that puts you in control of the schema of the declarative API it offers. Crossplane is a [Cloud Native Computing Foundation][cncf] project. Get Started Crossplane's [Get Started Docs] covers install and resource quickstarts. Releases Currently maintained releases, as well as the next few upcoming releases are listed below. For…
read the full crossplane overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or crossplane more popular?
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars and crossplane has 12,222. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and crossplane free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and crossplane under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and crossplane?
jenkins is written in Java and crossplane 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 crossplane?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,719 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose crossplane if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.