head to head · open source
Kestra vs tork
Kestra has 28,146 GitHub stars, 2,997 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tork has 817 stars, 63 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 3,345% (28,146 vs 817 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; tork is written in Go under MIT. Kestra has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, tork 8%. 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 | tork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 817 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 63 |
| 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 tork if
- You want the tork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tork 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 tork
Tork is a lightweight, distributed workflow engine written in Go and released under the MIT license. It runs each task of a job as a script inside its own container, so work is defined in YAML rather than as compiled code. The project lives in the Go ecosystem and uses Docker, Podman, or a plain shell as its task runtime, with PostgreSQL as the datastore and a message broker such as RabbitMQ for distributed operation.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or tork more popular?
Kestra has 28,146 GitHub stars and tork has 817. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and tork free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tork under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and tork?
Kestra is written in Java and tork 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 tork?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (28,146 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.