head to head · open source
jenkins vs task
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars, 9,835 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. task has 16,157 stars, 910 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 64% (26,556 vs 16,157 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; task is written in Go under MIT. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, task 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 | task | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 910 |
| 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 task if
- You want the task feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and task 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 task
Task is a fast, cross platform task runner and build tool, written in Go and inspired by Make, for developers and DevOps engineers who want to define and run project commands without maintaining a hand written Makefile.
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or task more popular?
jenkins has 26,556 GitHub stars and task has 16,157. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and task free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and task under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and task?
jenkins is written in Java and task 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 task?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,556 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose task if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.