head to head · open source
jenkins vs Nitric
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars, 9,819 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Nitric has 2,020 stars, 124 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. jenkins leads on adoption by 1,223% (26,719 vs 2,020 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; Nitric is written in Go under Apache-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, Nitric 6%. 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 | Nitric | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 124 |
| 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 Nitric if
- You want the Nitric 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 Nitric 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 Nitric
Effortless backends with infrastructure from code Nitric is a multi language framework, with concise inline infrastructure from code. Modern applications should be robust, productive and a joy to build. Nitric solves common problems building for modern platforms: Easy infrastructure from code Build for any host without coupling Run locally IAM for humans Common resources like databases, queues/topics, APIs, key value, buckets and more Change services, IaC tools or cloud providers without changing code We also know abstraction should mean building on existing layers, not hiding them. Nitric includes powerful…
read the full Nitric overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or Nitric more popular?
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars and Nitric has 2,020. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and Nitric free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and Nitric under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and Nitric?
jenkins is written in Java and Nitric 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 Nitric?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,719 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Nitric if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.