head to head · open source
Kestra vs swarmclaw
Kestra has 30,141 GitHub stars, 3,499 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. swarmclaw has 704 stars, 144 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 4,181% (30,141 vs 704 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; swarmclaw is written in TypeScript under MIT. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, swarmclaw 20%. Kestra was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), 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 | swarmclaw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 704 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-06-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 144 |
| 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 swarmclaw if
- You want the swarmclaw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and swarmclaw 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 swarmclaw
SwarmClaw The self hosted AI agent runtime and multi agent framework for autonomous agents. Open source agent swarms with durable agent memory, MCP tools, skills, delegation, schedules, and 23+ LLM providers — a practical Claude Code and LangChain alternative. SwarmClaw is an open source, self hosted AI agent runtime and multi agent framework. Run autonomous AI agents, agent swarms, and orchestrators with heartbeats, schedules, delegation, agent memory, runtime skills, and reviewed conversation to skill learning — across OpenClaw gateways, Claude, GPT, Gemini, OpenRouter, Ollama, and 23+ other providers. Use it…
read the full swarmclaw overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or swarmclaw more popular?
Kestra has 30,141 GitHub stars and swarmclaw has 704. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and swarmclaw free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and swarmclaw under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and swarmclaw?
Kestra is written in Java and swarmclaw 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 swarmclaw?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,141 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose swarmclaw if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.