head to head · open source
jenkins vs Pulumi
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars, 9,835 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi has 25,694 stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 3% (26,556 vs 25,694 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, Pulumi 6%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | Pulumi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 Pulumi if
- You want the Pulumi 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 Pulumi 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 Pulumi
Pulumi is an open source infrastructure as code tool that lets teams define and deploy cloud infrastructure using general purpose programming languages instead of YAML, aimed at developers, platform engineers, and agents working across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Kubernetes.
read the full Pulumi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or Pulumi more popular?
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars and Pulumi has 25,694. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and Pulumi free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and Pulumi under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and Pulumi?
jenkins is written in Java and Pulumi 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 Pulumi?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,556 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Pulumi if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.