head to head · open source
jenkins vs meshery
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars, 9,835 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. meshery has 11,815 stars, 3,853 forks, 1,983 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 125% (26,556 vs 11,815 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; meshery is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, meshery 33%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| jenkins | meshery | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 3.9K |
| 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 meshery if
- You want the meshery feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and meshery 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 meshery
Meshery is an open source, cloud native manager — a Cloud Native Computing Foundation project released under the Apache 2.0 licence — that provides a self service engineering platform for designing and managing Kubernetes based infrastructure and applications across multiple clusters and multiple clouds, built for platform engineers, operators, and teams who manage Kubernetes at scale.
read the full meshery 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 meshery more popular?
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars and meshery has 11,815. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and meshery free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and meshery under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and meshery?
jenkins is written in Java and meshery in TypeScript. 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 meshery?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,556 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose meshery if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.