head to head · open source
rundeck vs flashlight
rundeck has 6,304 GitHub stars, 987 forks, 81 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. flashlight has 1,605 stars, 48 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. rundeck leads on adoption by 293% (6,304 vs 1,605 stars). rundeck is written in Groovy under Apache-2.0; flashlight is written in TypeScript under MIT. rundeck has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, flashlight 3%. flashlight was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (audit), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| rundeck | flashlight | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.3K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Groovy | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 987 | ⑂ 48 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rundeck if
- You weight community size — 6.3K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Groovy
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick flashlight if
- You want the flashlight feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and flashlight fits your workflow better
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 →
About flashlight
Flashlight is an open source Android mobile performance audit tool written in TypeScript and licensed under MIT. It is positioned as a Lighthouse for Mobile tool, and it gives Android applications a performance score by aggregating different metrics. The project lives in the Android mobile ecosystem and covers native Android apps, React Native apps, and Flutter apps.
read the full flashlight overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Compliance & Risk Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Compliance & Risk Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is rundeck or flashlight more popular?
rundeck has 6,304 GitHub stars and flashlight has 1,605. rundeck has the larger community by that measure.
Are rundeck and flashlight free?
Both are open source. rundeck is licensed under Apache-2.0 and flashlight under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rundeck and flashlight?
rundeck is written in Groovy and flashlight 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, rundeck or flashlight?
Choose rundeck if you want the larger community (6,304 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose flashlight if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.