head to head · open source
salt vs apscheduler
salt has 15,661 GitHub stars, 5,610 forks, 1,885 open issues and last shipped yesterday. apscheduler has 7,630 stars, 784 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. salt leads on adoption by 105% (15,661 vs 7,630 stars). salt is written in Python under Apache-2.0; apscheduler is written in Python under MIT. salt has attracted 36% as many forks as stars, apscheduler 10%. salt 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
| salt | apscheduler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 784 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick salt if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick apscheduler if
- You want the apscheduler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and apscheduler fits your workflow better
About salt
Salt is a Python based, event driven automation framework that deploys, configures and manages complex IT systems at scale, built for system administrators, platform and infrastructure engineers, and DevOps teams responsible for keeping many servers, virtual machines, containers, databases, web servers and network devices in a consistent desired state.
About apscheduler
APScheduler is an MIT licensed Python library that provides task scheduling and job queuing, scaling from a single process script to multi node deployments that share a persistent data store.
read the full apscheduler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is salt or apscheduler more popular?
salt has 15,661 GitHub stars and apscheduler has 7,630. salt has the larger community by that measure.
Are salt and apscheduler free?
Both are open source. salt is licensed under Apache-2.0 and apscheduler under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between salt and apscheduler?
salt is written in Python and apscheduler in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, salt or apscheduler?
Choose salt if you want the larger community (15,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose apscheduler if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.