head to head · open source
salt vs kubestellar
salt has 15,661 GitHub stars, 5,610 forks, 1,885 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kubestellar has 711 stars, 316 forks, 215 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. salt leads on adoption by 2,103% (15,661 vs 711 stars). salt is written in Python under Apache-2.0; kubestellar is written in Go under Apache-2.0. salt has attracted 36% as many forks as stars, kubestellar 44%. salt was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (edge), 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
| salt | kubestellar | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 711 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 316 |
| 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 kubestellar if
- You want the kubestellar 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 kubestellar 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 kubestellar
KubeStellar is an Apache 2.0, CNCF Sandbox multi cluster configuration management engine, written in Go, that lets teams deploy and configure workloads across many Kubernetes clusters — edge, multi cloud, and hybrid cloud — using the same single cluster tooling they already run.
read the full kubestellar overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is salt or kubestellar more popular?
salt has 15,661 GitHub stars and kubestellar has 711. salt has the larger community by that measure.
Are salt and kubestellar free?
Both are open source. salt is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kubestellar under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between salt and kubestellar?
salt is written in Python and kubestellar 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, salt or kubestellar?
Choose salt if you want the larger community (15,661 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kubestellar if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.