head to head · open source
Kestra vs waverless
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. waverless has 634 stars, 68 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Kestra leads on adoption by 4,651% (30,122 vs 634 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; waverless is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, waverless 11%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Kestra | waverless | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 634 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-21 |
| 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 waverless if
- You want the waverless 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 waverless 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 waverless
Waverless High performance Serverless GPU Task Orchestration System 🌐 wavespeed.ai • 📐 Architecture • 📖 User Guide • 🔧 Developer Guide Features 🚀 Pull based Architecture Workers actively pull tasks for better load balancing 🔌 RunPod Compatible Zero code migration from runpod python SDK ☸️ Multi Provider Kubernetes, Novita Serverless, Docker backends 📊 Smart Autoscaling Queue depth, priority, and resource aware scaling 🛡️ Graceful Shutdown Zero task loss during rolling updates Architecture Quick Start API Example Documentation License MIT License WaveSpeed AI — AI image & video generation platform. Try it…
read the full waverless overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Orchestration & Scheduling projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Orchestration & Scheduling field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or waverless more popular?
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars and waverless has 634. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and waverless free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and waverless under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and waverless?
Kestra is written in Java and waverless 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 waverless?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,122 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose waverless if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.