head to head · open source
sops vs gocd
sops has 23,147 GitHub stars, 1,081 forks, 446 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. gocd has 7,434 stars, 980 forks, 83 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sops leads on adoption by 211% (23,147 vs 7,434 stars). sops is written in Go under MPL-2.0; gocd is written in Java under Apache-2.0. sops has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, gocd 13%. gocd 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
| sops | gocd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 7.4K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 980 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick sops if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick gocd if
- You want the gocd 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 gocd fits your workflow better
About sops
SOPS, short for Secrets OPerationS, is an editor of encrypted files written in Go and released under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0. It handles YAML, JSON, ENV, INI and BINARY formats, and it encrypts those files using AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, HuaweiCloud KMS, age, or PGP. The project lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem: it started at Mozilla in 2015, was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in 2023, and is now a CNCF Sandbox project under a new group of maintainers. It carries 23,121 stars and 1,080 forks, with documentation hosted at getsops.io.
About gocd
GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server, licensed under Apache 2.0 and sponsored by Thoughtworks, Inc., that automates and streamlines the build test release cycle for teams that want to model, run, and control their own delivery pipelines.
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Frequently asked questions
Is sops or gocd more popular?
sops has 23,147 GitHub stars and gocd has 7,434. sops has the larger community by that measure.
Are sops and gocd free?
Both are open source. sops is licensed under MPL-2.0 and gocd under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sops and gocd?
sops is written in Go and gocd 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, sops or gocd?
Choose sops if you want the larger community (23,147 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose gocd if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.