head to head · open source
Kestra vs earthly
Kestra has 28,146 GitHub stars, 2,997 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. earthly has 12,047 stars, 457 forks, 744 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 134% (28,146 vs 12,047 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; earthly is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Kestra has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, earthly 4%. Kestra was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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 | earthly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2025-10-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 457 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Kestra if
- You weight community size — 28K 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 earthly if
- You want the earthly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and earthly fits your workflow better
About Kestra
Kestra is an open source, event driven orchestration platform for data, AI, and infrastructure workflows. It operates in the Java based ecosystem and is licensed under Apache 2.0. The project provides a unified interface for both scheduled and real time automation, supporting declarative workflow definitions in YAML while also offering visual and AI assisted authoring.
read the full Kestra overview →
About earthly
Earthly is a container based build and CI/CD framework that runs every pipeline inside containers so the same build executes identically on a laptop, a colleague's machine, or any CI system, and it is built for engineers and platform teams who maintain build logic across monorepos or polyrepos and are comfortable with Dockerfile and Makefile style syntax.
read the full earthly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or earthly more popular?
Kestra has 28,146 GitHub stars and earthly has 12,047. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and earthly free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and earthly under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and earthly?
Kestra is written in Java and earthly 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 earthly?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (28,146 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose earthly if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.