head to head · open source
Kestra vs Bacalhau
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bacalhau has 876 stars, 105 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 3,339% (30,122 vs 876 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; Bacalhau is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Bacalhau 12%. Kestra was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (data-engineering), 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 | Bacalhau | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 876 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 105 |
| 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 Bacalhau if
- You want the Bacalhau 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 Bacalhau 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 Bacalhau
Globally Distributed Compute Orchestrator ⚡ Compute Over Data (CoD) What is Bacalhau? Bacalhau is an open source distributed compute orchestration framework designed to bring compute to the data. Instead of moving large datasets around networks, Bacalhau makes it easy to execute jobs close to the data's location, drastically reducing latency and resource overhead. Why Bacalhau? ⚡ Fast job processing : Jobs in Bacalhau are processed where the data was created and all jobs are parallel by default 💰 Low cost : Reduce (or eliminate) ingress/egress costs since jobs are processed closer to the source 🔒 Secure : Data…
read the full Bacalhau overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or Bacalhau more popular?
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars and Bacalhau has 876. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and Bacalhau free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Bacalhau under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and Bacalhau?
Kestra is written in Java and Bacalhau 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 Bacalhau?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,122 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Bacalhau if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.