head to head · open source
xxl-job vs sidequest
xxl-job has 30,566 GitHub stars, 11,490 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. sidequest has 1,015 stars, 25 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 2,911% (30,566 vs 1,015 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; sidequest is written in TypeScript under LGPL-3.0. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, sidequest 2%. sidequest was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cron, distributed), 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
| xxl-job | sidequest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 25 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick xxl-job if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick sidequest if
- You want the sidequest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sidequest fits your workflow better
About xxl-job
XXL JOB is a distributed task scheduling framework written in Java and released under the GPL 3.0 licence, built for teams that need scheduled jobs to run reliably across a cluster of machines rather than inside a single application process.
read the full xxl-job overview →
About sidequest
Sidequest is a Redis free background job processor for Node.js that persists jobs in the PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or MongoDB database an application already runs, aimed at teams that need durable, distributed queue processing without operating Redis.
read the full sidequest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or sidequest more popular?
xxl-job has 30,566 GitHub stars and sidequest has 1,015. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and sidequest free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and sidequest under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and sidequest?
xxl-job is written in Java and sidequest 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, xxl-job or sidequest?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,566 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sidequest if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.