head to head · open source
Kestra vs Temporal
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars, 3,495 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Temporal has 24,138 stars, 2,068 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kestra leads on adoption by 25% (30,122 vs 24,138 stars). Kestra is written in Java under Apache-2.0; Temporal is written in Go under MIT. Kestra has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Temporal 9%. Temporal 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
| Kestra | Temporal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 24K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Kestra if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Temporal if
- You want the Temporal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Temporal fits your workflow better
About Kestra
Open source orchestration platform for data, AI, and infrastructure workflows Click on the image to learn how to get started with Kestra in 3 minutes. 🌟 What is Kestra? Kestra is an open source, event driven orchestration platform for data, AI, and infrastructure workflows. It unifies scheduled and event driven automation behind a declarative, language agnostic interface. By bringing Infrastructure as Code best practices to your data, process, and microservice pipelines, you can build reliable workflows directly from the UI in just a few lines of YAML, let the built in AI Copilot write them for you, or generate…
read the full Kestra overview →
About Temporal
Temporal—durable execution platform Introduction • Getting Started • Contributing • Temporal Docs • Temporal 101 Introduction Temporal is a durable execution platform that enables developers to build scalable applications without sacrificing productivity or reliability. The Temporal server executes units of application logic called Workflows in a resilient manner that automatically handles intermittent failures, and retries failed operations. Temporal is a mature technology that originated as a fork of Uber's Cadence. It is developed by Temporal Technologies, a startup by the creators of…
read the full Temporal overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kestra or Temporal more popular?
Kestra has 30,122 GitHub stars and Temporal has 24,138. Kestra has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kestra and Temporal free?
Both are open source. Kestra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Temporal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Kestra and Temporal?
Kestra is written in Java and Temporal 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, Kestra or Temporal?
Choose Kestra if you want the larger community (30,122 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Temporal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.