head to head · open source
rancher vs dolphinscheduler
rancher has 25,922 GitHub stars, 3,222 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dolphinscheduler has 14,482 stars, 5,092 forks, 128 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rancher leads on adoption by 79% (25,922 vs 14,482 stars). rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0; dolphinscheduler is written in Java under Apache-2.0. rancher has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, dolphinscheduler 35%. rancher was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (orchestration), 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
| rancher | dolphinscheduler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 5.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rancher if
- You weight community size — 26K 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 dolphinscheduler if
- You want the dolphinscheduler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and dolphinscheduler fits your workflow better
About rancher
Rancher is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go based open source container management platform for organizations that deploy containers in production and need to run Kubernetes everywhere while meeting IT requirements and empowering DevOps teams.
read the full rancher overview →
About dolphinscheduler
Apache DolphinScheduler is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Java based data orchestration platform for data engineers, analytics teams and platform operators who need to schedule complex task dependencies across data pipelines without building the control plane themselves.
read the full dolphinscheduler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or dolphinscheduler more popular?
rancher has 25,922 GitHub stars and dolphinscheduler has 14,482. rancher has the larger community by that measure.
Are rancher and dolphinscheduler free?
Both are open source. rancher is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dolphinscheduler under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rancher and dolphinscheduler?
rancher is written in Go and dolphinscheduler in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, rancher or dolphinscheduler?
Choose rancher if you want the larger community (25,922 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dolphinscheduler if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.