head to head · open source
xxl-job vs gocron
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. gocron has 809 stars, 62 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 3,678% (30,561 vs 809 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; gocron is written in Go under MIT. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, gocron 8%. gocron was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (cron, distributed, scheduler, task), 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 | gocron | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 809 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 62 |
| 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 gocron if
- You want the gocron feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gocron 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 gocron
gocron A lightweight distributed scheduled task management system developed in Go, designed to replace Linux crontab. English · 简体中文 Agent Auto Registration Task Management AI Failure Diagnosis 📖 Documentation Full documentation is available at: document 🚀 Quick Start Installation and deployment guide 🤖 Agent Auto Registration One click task node deployment ⚙️ Configuration Detailed configuration guide 🔌 API Documentation API reference ✨ Features Web Interface : Intuitive task management interface Second level Precision : Supports Crontab expressions with second precision High Availability : Database lock bas…
read the full gocron overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or gocron more popular?
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars and gocron has 809. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and gocron free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and gocron under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and gocron?
xxl-job is written in Java and gocron 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 gocron?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose gocron if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.