head to head · open source
Kestra vs moon
Kestra has 28,146 GitHub stars, 2,997 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. moon has 4,105 stars, 252 forks, 99 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kestra leads on adoption by 586% (28,146 vs 4,105 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; moon is written in Rust under MIT. Kestra has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, moon 6%. 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 | moon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 252 |
| 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 moon if
- You want the moon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and moon 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 moon
moon is a repository management, organization, orchestration, and notification tool for the web ecosystem, written in Rust under the MIT license. It is a build system and monorepo management tool whose concepts are heavily inspired by Bazel and other build systems. The project is associated with build system, monorepo tooling, ci cd, Node.js, JavaScript, Bun, Deno, Go, Python, and Ruby topics.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or moon more popular?
Kestra has 28,146 GitHub stars and moon has 4,105. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and moon free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and moon under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and moon?
Kestra is written in Java and moon 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 moon?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (28,146 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose moon if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.