head to head · open source
Kestra vs gocron
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gocron has 805 stars, 64 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 3,642% (30,122 vs 805 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; gocron is written in Go under MIT. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, gocron 8%. 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.
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Side by side
| Kestra | gocron | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 805 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 64 |
| 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 gocron if
- You want the gocron feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gocron 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 gocron
gocron A lightweight distributed scheduled task management system developed in Go, designed to replace Linux crontab. English · 简体中文 Agent Auto Registration Task Management AI Failure Diagnosis 📖 Documentation Full documentation is available at: document 🚀 Quick Start Installation and deployment guide 🤖 Agent Auto Registration One click task node deployment ⚙️ Configuration Detailed configuration guide 🔌 API Documentation API reference ✨ Features Web Interface : Intuitive task management interface Second level Precision : Supports Crontab expressions with second precision High Availability : Database lock…
read the full gocron overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or gocron more popular?
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars and gocron has 805. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and gocron free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gocron under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and gocron?
Kestra is written in Java and gocron 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 gocron?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,122 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gocron if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.