head to head · open source
Kestra vs quirrel
Kestra has 30,111 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. quirrel has 929 stars, 68 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kestra leads on adoption by 3,141% (30,111 vs 929 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; quirrel is written in TypeScript under MIT. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, quirrel 7%. quirrel 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 | quirrel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 929 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 68 |
| 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 quirrel if
- You want the quirrel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and quirrel 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 quirrel
Quirrel 🎉 Quirrel joins Netlify. Learn more 🎉 The Task Queueing Solution for Serverless. Landing Page Documentation Quirrel makes job queueing simple as cake. It supports delayed jobs, fanout jobs, recurring jobs and CRON jobs. Quirrel values ... great DX (through tailormade client libraries & the development UI) privacy (through end to end encryption) free software (it's MIT licensed!) easy setup (through hosted offering and easy on prem) Getting Started If you want to learn about Quirrel, check out the tutorial! If you want to integrate Quirrel into an existing application, check out the Getting Started…
read the full quirrel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or quirrel more popular?
Kestra has 30,111 GitHub stars and quirrel has 929. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and quirrel free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and quirrel under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and quirrel?
Kestra is written in Java and quirrel in TypeScript. 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 quirrel?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose quirrel if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.