head to head · open source
xxl-job vs hof
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. hof has 613 stars, 48 forks, 74 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 4,885% (30,561 vs 613 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; hof is written in Go under Apache-2.0. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, hof 8%. xxl-job 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
| xxl-job | hof | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 613 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 | 2026-05-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 48 |
| 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 hof if
- You want the hof 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 hof 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 hof
hof the higher order framework A tool that unifies data models, schemas, code generation, and a task engine. hof is a CLI tool you add to your workflow. Foundation in CUE Deterministic and Agentic code generation Data models that can evolve and be input to code generation Task engine based on cue/flow Agent servers and VS Code extension hof uses CUE to power the DX and implementation. We believe CUE is a great language for specifying schemas, configuration, and generally for writing anything declarative or this is a source of truth. It has good theory and comes from the same people that brought us containers, Go,…
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or hof more popular?
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars and hof has 613. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and hof free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and hof under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and hof?
xxl-job is written in Java and hof 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 hof?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose hof if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.