head to head · open source
xxl-job vs agola
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. agola has 1,622 stars, 122 forks, 71 open issues and last shipped 12 months ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 1,784% (30,562 vs 1,622 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; agola is written in Go under Apache-2.0. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, agola 8%. xxl-job was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | agola | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 | 2025-09-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 122 |
| 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 agola if
- You want the agola 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 agola 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 agola
Agola is an open source CI/CD platform written in Go and released under Apache 2.0. It lives in the DevOps ecosystem, where teams need continuous integration, delivery, and deployment pipelines for Git repositories and containerized execution environments.
read the full agola overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or agola more popular?
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars and agola has 1,622. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and agola free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and agola under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and agola?
xxl-job is written in Java and agola 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, xxl-job or agola?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,562 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose agola if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.