head to head · open source
jenkins vs wtf
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars, 9,819 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. wtf has 17,139 stars, 867 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. jenkins leads on adoption by 56% (26,719 vs 17,139 stars). jenkins is written in Java under MIT; wtf is written in Go under MPL-2.0. jenkins has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, wtf 5%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (devops, hacktoberfest), 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 | wtf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 17K |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 867 |
| 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 wtf if
- You want the wtf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and wtf 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 wtf
:rotating light: :warning: This project is going through some changes as we prepare for v1.0. This includes a rename from WTF to Tessera ! Stay tuned! :warning: :rotating light: WTF (aka 'wtfutil') is the personal information dashboard for your terminal, providing at a glance access to your very important but infrequently needed stats and data. Used by thousands of developers and tech people around the world, WTF is free and open source. To support the continued use and development of WTF, please consider sponsoring WTF via GitHub Sponsors. Are you a contributor or sponsor? Awesome! See here for how you can…
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Frequently asked questions
Is jenkins or wtf more popular?
jenkins has 26,719 GitHub stars and wtf has 17,139. jenkins has the larger community by that measure.
Are jenkins and wtf free?
Both are open source. jenkins is licensed under MIT and wtf under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between jenkins and wtf?
jenkins is written in Java and wtf 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 wtf?
Choose jenkins if you want the larger community (26,719 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose wtf if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.