head to head · open source
Kestra vs hcom
Kestra has 30,141 GitHub stars, 3,499 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hcom has 626 stars, 104 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 4,715% (30,141 vs 626 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; hcom is written in Rust under MIT. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, hcom 17%. Kestra was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai-agents, automation), 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 | hcom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 626 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 104 |
| 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 hcom if
- You want the hcom feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and hcom 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 hcom
hcom Hook your coding agents together hcom is a CLI that coding agents use to message, watch, and spawn each other across terminals. Works with Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Kilo Code, Pi, Oh My Pi, Antigravity, Cursor, Kimi and Copilot in any combination, without changing how you use them. Use it to coordinate pipelines, run different AI CLIs as each other's subagents, or just instead of copy paste. Single Rust binary, no background services. Start an agent with hcom in front, then prompt normally. Install Other install options Quickstart Terminal 1: Terminal 2: Prompt: ask the other agent their favorite cake…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or hcom more popular?
Kestra has 30,141 GitHub stars and hcom has 626. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and hcom free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and hcom under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and hcom?
Kestra is written in Java and hcom in Rust. 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 hcom?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,141 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose hcom if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.