head to head · open source
jenkins vs spug
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars, 9,835 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. spug has 11,073 stars, 2,196 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. jenkins leads on adoption by 140% (26,556 vs 11,073 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; spug is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, spug 20%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (cicd, devops, jenkins), 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 | spug | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 spug if
- You want the spug feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and spug 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 spug
Spug is a lightweight, agent free automatic operations and maintenance platform for small and medium sized enterprises, combining host management, batch execution, a browser terminal, file management, application release, pipelines, task planning, a configuration center, monitoring, and alerting in one AGPL 3.0 open source system.
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or spug more popular?
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars and spug has 11,073. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and spug free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and spug under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and spug?
jenkins is written in Java and spug in JavaScript. 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 spug?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,556 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose spug if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.