head to head · open source
jenkins vs terragrunt
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars, 9,819 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terragrunt has 9,910 stars, 1,248 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins leads on adoption by 170% (26,719 vs 9,910 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 13%. terragrunt 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 | ★ 9.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| 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
Table of Contents About What to Use Jenkins for and When to Use It Downloads Getting Started (Development) Source Contributing to Jenkins News and Website Governance Adopters License About In a nutshell, Jenkins is the leading open source automation server. Built with Java, it provides over 2,000 plugins to support automating virtually anything, so that humans can spend their time doing things machines cannot. What to Use Jenkins for and When to Use It Use Jenkins to automate your development workflow, so you can focus on work that matters most. Jenkins is commonly used for: Building projects Running tests to…
read the full jenkins overview →
About terragrunt
Terragrunt 🎉 Terragrunt v1.0 is here! Read the announcement to learn more. Terragrunt is a flexible orchestration tool that allows Infrastructure as Code written in OpenTofu/Terraform to scale. Please see the following for more info, including install instructions and complete documentation: Terragrunt Website Getting started with Terragrunt Terragrunt Documentation Terragrunt Scale Contributing to Terragrunt Commercial Support Join the Discord! Join our community for discussions, support, and contributions: License This code is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt.
read the full terragrunt overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or terragrunt more popular?
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars and terragrunt has 9,910. 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 (26,719 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose terragrunt if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.