head to head · open source
Kestra vs process-compose
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. process-compose has 2,914 stars, 160 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kestra leads on adoption by 934% (30,122 vs 2,914 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; process-compose is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, process-compose 5%. 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 | process-compose | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 2.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 160 |
| 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 process-compose if
- You want the process-compose 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 process-compose 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 process-compose
Process Compose Process Compose is a simple and flexible scheduler and orchestrator to manage non containerized applications. Why? Because sometimes you just don't want to deal with docker files, volume definitions, networks and docker registries. Since it's written in Go, Process Compose is a single binary file and has no other dependencies. Once installed, you just need to describe your workflow using a simple YAML schema in a file called process compose.yaml : And start it by running process compose from your terminal. Check the Documentation for more advanced use cases. Features Processes execution (in…
read the full process-compose overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or process-compose more popular?
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars and process-compose has 2,914. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and process-compose free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and process-compose under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and process-compose?
Kestra is written in Java and process-compose 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 process-compose?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,122 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose process-compose if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.