head to head · open source
Kestra vs agent-swarm
Kestra has 30,141 GitHub stars, 3,499 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agent-swarm has 992 stars, 145 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kestra leads on adoption by 2,938% (30,141 vs 992 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; agent-swarm is written in TypeScript under MIT. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, agent-swarm 15%. agent-swarm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Kestra | agent-swarm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 992 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 145 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Kestra if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agent-swarm if
- You want the agent-swarm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and agent-swarm fits your workflow better
About Kestra
Open source orchestration platform for data, AI, and infrastructure workflows Click on the image to learn how to get started with Kestra in 3 minutes. 🌟 What is Kestra? Kestra is an open source, event driven orchestration platform for data, AI, and infrastructure workflows. It unifies scheduled and event driven automation behind a declarative, language agnostic interface. By bringing Infrastructure as Code best practices to your data, process, and microservice pipelines, you can build reliable workflows directly from the UI in just a few lines of YAML, let the built in AI Copilot write them for you, or generate…
read the full Kestra overview →
About agent-swarm
An engine to make your company AI Native Built by desplega.sh . [!TIP] This repo evolves every single day. Watch now → ▸ daily evolution · slack → pr · Making of agent swarm.dev is an open source operating system for AI work. A lead agent delegates goals to workers such as Claude Code or Codex. Isolated containers, shared memory, tools, schedules, and review gates preserve work across sessions. What you get A lead agent that receives work from Slack, repositories, issue trackers, email, or the API Schema validated task results for callers that need structured JSON output Deferred tasks that wake when all or any…
read the full agent-swarm overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Orchestration & Scheduling projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Orchestration & Scheduling field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or agent-swarm more popular?
Kestra has 30,141 GitHub stars and agent-swarm has 992. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and agent-swarm free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and agent-swarm under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and agent-swarm?
Kestra is written in Java and agent-swarm in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Kestra or agent-swarm?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,141 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose agent-swarm if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.