head to head · open source
Kestra vs erda
Kestra has 30,111 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. erda has 2,759 stars, 380 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 991% (30,111 vs 2,759 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; erda is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, erda 14%. Kestra was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (devops), 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 | erda | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 380 |
| 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 erda if
- You want the erda 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 erda 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 erda
An enterprise grade Cloud Native application platform Introduction Quick Start Installation Documentation CHANGELOG Contributing Demo Introduction Erda is an open source platform created by Terminus to ensure the development of microservice applications. It provides DevOps, microservice governance, and multi cloud management capabilities. The multi cloud architecture based on Kubernetes and application centric DevOps and microservice governance can make the development, operation, monitoring, and problem diagnosis of complex business applications simpler and more efficient. Functional Architecture Erda is mainly…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or erda more popular?
Kestra has 30,111 GitHub stars and erda has 2,759. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and erda free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and erda under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and erda?
Kestra is written in Java and erda 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 erda?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose erda if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.