head to head · open source
kyverno vs rundeck
kyverno has 8,168 GitHub stars, 1,602 forks, 703 open issues and last shipped today. rundeck has 6,304 stars, 987 forks, 81 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. kyverno leads on adoption by 30% (8,168 vs 6,304 stars). kyverno is written in Go under Apache-2.0; rundeck is written in Groovy under Apache-2.0. kyverno has attracted 20% as many forks as stars, rundeck 16%. kyverno 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
| kyverno | rundeck | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.2K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Groovy |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 987 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick kyverno if
- You weight community size — 8.2K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rundeck if
- You want the rundeck feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Groovy
- You evaluated both and rundeck fits your workflow better
About kyverno
Kyverno is a Kubernetes native policy engine that lets platform engineering teams define security, compliance, automation, and governance rules as policy as code, using the Kubernetes tools they already run rather than a separate policy language.
read the full kyverno overview →
About rundeck
Rundeck is an open source runbook automation service maintained by PagerDuty, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 and published from the rundeck.org homepage. It provides a web console, command line tools, and a WebAPI, and its stated purpose is to enable self service operations by giving specific users access to existing tools, services, and scripts. The repository is 16 years old and lives in the DevOps and operations tooling ecosystem, alongside topics such as ansible, automation, deployment, audit, ops, and devops tools.
read the full rundeck overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kyverno or rundeck more popular?
kyverno has 8,168 GitHub stars and rundeck has 6,304. kyverno has the larger community by that measure.
Are kyverno and rundeck free?
Both are open source. kyverno is licensed under Apache-2.0 and rundeck under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kyverno and rundeck?
kyverno is written in Go and rundeck in Groovy. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, kyverno or rundeck?
Choose kyverno if you want the larger community (8,168 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose rundeck if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.