head to head · open source
jenkins vs st2
jenkins has 26,559 GitHub stars, 9,834 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped today. st2 has 6,536 stars, 787 forks, 603 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. jenkins leads on adoption by 306% (26,559 vs 6,536 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; st2 is written in Python under Apache-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, st2 12%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cicd, 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 | st2 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-02 |
| 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 st2 if
- You want the st2 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and st2 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 st2
StackStorm — packaged and installed as st2 — is an open source, event driven automation platform, often described as "IFTTT for Ops", that ties existing infrastructure, monitoring and application tools together so DevOps engineers and SREs can automate remediation, incident response, troubleshooting and deployment as rules and workflows stored as code.
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or st2 more popular?
jenkins has 26,559 GitHub stars and st2 has 6,536. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and st2 free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and st2 under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and st2?
jenkins is written in Java and st2 in Python. 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 st2?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose st2 if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.