head to head · open source
jenkins vs dagger
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars, 9,835 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dagger has 16,261 stars, 924 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 63% (26,556 vs 16,261 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; dagger is written in Go under Apache-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, dagger 6%. dagger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (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 | dagger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 924 |
| 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 dagger if
- You want the dagger 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 dagger 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 dagger
Dagger is an open source automation engine for software delivery, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It builds, tests and ships any codebase, and it runs locally, inside a CI server, or directly in the cloud. The project lives in the cloud infrastructure and CI/CD ecosystem, where it occupies the space normally filled by shell scripts and proprietary pipeline YAML. It has been developed for roughly seven years and carries a substantial community footprint, with more than sixteen thousand stars and over nine hundred forks on GitHub.
read the full dagger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or dagger more popular?
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars and dagger has 16,261. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and dagger free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and dagger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and dagger?
jenkins is written in Java and dagger 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 dagger?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,556 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dagger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.