head to head · open source
xxl-job vs Trigger
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Trigger has 16,324 stars, 1,462 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xxl-job leads on adoption by 87% (30,562 vs 16,324 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, Trigger 9%. Trigger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (scheduler), 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 | Trigger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 16K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 Trigger if
- You want the Trigger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Trigger 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 Trigger
Trigger is an open source TypeScript platform for building and deploying AI agents and workflow tasks. It lives in the infrastructure, orchestration, and scheduling ecosystem, and it is positioned as a way to run long running AI tasks without typical serverless timeout constraints. The project provides a software development kit, a deployment target, and operational features such as retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling.
read the full Trigger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or Trigger more popular?
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars and Trigger has 16,324. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and Trigger free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Trigger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and Trigger?
xxl-job is written in Java and Trigger 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 Trigger?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,562 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Trigger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.