head to head · open source
jenkins vs terragrunt
jenkins has 26,559 GitHub stars, 9,834 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped today. terragrunt has 9,837 stars, 1,227 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 170% (26,559 vs 9,837 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; terragrunt is written in Go under MIT. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, terragrunt 12%. 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 | terragrunt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 9.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 terragrunt if
- You want the terragrunt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and terragrunt 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 terragrunt
Terragrunt is an MIT licensed, Go based orchestration tool that lets Infrastructure as Code written in OpenTofu or Terraform scale, and it is built for DevOps and cloud infrastructure teams that already run that tooling.
read the full terragrunt overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or terragrunt more popular?
jenkins has 26,559 GitHub stars and terragrunt has 9,837. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and terragrunt free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and terragrunt under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and terragrunt?
jenkins is written in Java and terragrunt 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 terragrunt?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose terragrunt if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.