head to head · open source
Kestra vs earthly
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. earthly has 12,054 stars, 466 forks, 744 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 150% (30,122 vs 12,054 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; earthly is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Kestra has attracted 12% 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 | ★ 30K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 466 |
| 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 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
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 earthly
Earthly Please note that Earthly is no longer actively maintained. Read more. It’s like Docker for builds 🔁 Repeatable Builds Write builds once, and run them anywhere – on your laptop, remote, and in any CI. ❤️ Super Simple Instantly recognizable syntax – like Dockerfile and Makefile had a baby. 🛠 Compatible with Every Language, Framework, and Build Tool If it runs on Linux, it runs on Earthly. 🏘 Great for Monorepos and Polyrepos Organize your build logic however makes the most sense for your project. 💨 Fast Builds Build caching and parallel execution makes builds fast automatically. ♻️ Reuse, Don't Repeat…
read the full earthly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or earthly more popular?
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars and earthly has 12,054. 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 (30,122 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.