head to head · open source
jenkins vs jx
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars, 9,819 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jx has 4,691 stars, 787 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 470% (26,719 vs 4,691 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; jx is written in Go under Apache-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, jx 17%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (cicd, continuous-delivery, 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 | jx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 787 |
| 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 jx if
- You want the jx 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 jx 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 jx
JayeX CLI jx is the modular command line CLI for JayeX 3.x Commands See the jx command reference Issues To track issues in this repository and all the related Plugins use these links: view open issues in jenkins x plugins view open pull requests in jenkins x plugins Plugins You can browse the documentation for all of the jx plugins at: Plugin CLI Reference Plugin Source Components jx git operator is an operator for triggering jobs when git commits are made octant jx an open source JayeX UI for vmware tanzu/octant Libraries These are the modular libraries which have been refactored out of the main jenkins x/jx…
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or jx more popular?
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars and jx has 4,691. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and jx free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and jx under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and jx?
jenkins is written in Java and jx 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 jx?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,719 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose jx if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.