head to head · open source
xxl-job vs Bacalhau
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Bacalhau has 871 stars, 101 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 3,409% (30,562 vs 871 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; Bacalhau is written in Go under Apache-2.0. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, Bacalhau 12%. Bacalhau 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 | Bacalhau | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 871 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 101 |
| 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 Bacalhau if
- You want the Bacalhau 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 Bacalhau 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 Bacalhau
Bacalhau is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed distributed compute orchestrator written in Go that brings computation to the data rather than moving data to computation, built for data engineers, data scientists, bioinformatics teams and infrastructure operators who run batch, edge and cross organizational workloads at petabyte scale.
read the full Bacalhau overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or Bacalhau more popular?
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars and Bacalhau has 871. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and Bacalhau free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Bacalhau under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and Bacalhau?
xxl-job is written in Java and Bacalhau 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 Bacalhau?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,562 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Bacalhau if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.