head to head · open source
Kestra vs atmos
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. atmos has 1,409 stars, 197 forks, 289 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kestra leads on adoption by 2,038% (30,122 vs 1,409 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; atmos is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, atmos 14%. atmos was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (automation, 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
| Kestra | atmos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 197 |
| 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 atmos if
- You want the atmos feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and atmos 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 atmos
Run your infrastructure anywhere. Atmos is the open source runtime for infrastructure — it builds, authenticates, and ships Terraform, OpenTofu, Kubernetes, Helm, and containers the same way on your laptop, in CI, and with AI agents. Auth, secrets, vendoring, caching, the toolchain, workflows, and CI are built in. Point every environment at the same reusable root modules and treat the rest as configuration. Stop stringing together 25 tools. Run it on your laptop. Run it the same in CI. Run it with agents. Everything is open source and free. [!TIP] You can try out atmos directly in your browser using GitHub…
read the full atmos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or atmos more popular?
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars and atmos has 1,409. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and atmos free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and atmos under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and atmos?
Kestra is written in Java and atmos 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, Kestra or atmos?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,122 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose atmos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.