head to head · open source
Kestra vs dolphinscheduler
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dolphinscheduler has 14,551 stars, 5,123 forks, 128 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kestra leads on adoption by 107% (30,122 vs 14,551 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; dolphinscheduler is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, dolphinscheduler 35%. Kestra was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | dolphinscheduler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 5.1K |
| 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 dolphinscheduler if
- You want the dolphinscheduler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and dolphinscheduler 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 dolphinscheduler
Apache Dolphinscheduler About Apache DolphinScheduler is a modern data orchestration platform that empowers agile, low code development of high performance workflows. It is dedicated to handling complex task dependencies in data pipelines and provides a wide range of built in job types out of the box . Key features for DolphinScheduler are as follows: Easy to deploy, providing four deployment modes including Standalone, Cluster, Docker, and Kubernetes. Easy to use, workflows can be created and managed via Web UI, Python SDK or Open API Highly reliable and high availability, with a decentralized, multi master and…
read the full dolphinscheduler 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 dolphinscheduler more popular?
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars and dolphinscheduler has 14,551. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and dolphinscheduler free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dolphinscheduler under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and dolphinscheduler?
Kestra is written in Java and dolphinscheduler in Java. 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 dolphinscheduler?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,122 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dolphinscheduler if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.