head to head · open source
Kestra vs dmux
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dmux has 1,814 stars, 138 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 1,561% (30,122 vs 1,814 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; dmux is written in HTML under MIT. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, dmux 8%. Kestra 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.
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Side by side
| Kestra | dmux | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 138 |
| 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 dmux if
- You want the dmux feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and dmux 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 dmux
Parallel agents with tmux and worktrees Manage multiple AI coding agents in isolated git worktrees. Branch, develop, and merge — all in parallel. Documentation · Getting Started · Issues Language: English 日本語 Install Quick Start Press n to create a new pane, type a prompt, pick one or more agents (or none for a plain terminal), and dmux handles the rest — worktree, branch, and agent launch. On first run, dmux can configure a primary inference provider/model and an optional backup. It discovers models from the provider when possible and supports API key providers, custom OpenAI…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or dmux more popular?
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars and dmux has 1,814. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and dmux free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dmux under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and dmux?
Kestra is written in Java and dmux in HTML. 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 dmux?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,122 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dmux if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.