head to head · open source
jenkins vs goss
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars, 9,835 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goss has 5,971 stars, 501 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. jenkins leads on adoption by 345% (26,556 vs 5,971 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; goss is written in Go under Apache-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, goss 8%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | goss | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 501 |
| 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 goss if
- You want the goss 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 goss 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 goss
Goss is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go based YAML test runner that validates the configuration of a server or container and can expose the result as a health endpoint, built for DevOps engineers and SREs who need fast, repeatable checks on Linux hosts, Docker containers, and Kubernetes workloads.
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or goss more popular?
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars and goss has 5,971. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and goss free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and goss under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and goss?
jenkins is written in Java and goss 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 goss?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,556 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose goss if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.