head to head · open source
xxl-job vs kala
xxl-job has 30,648 GitHub stars, 11,492 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. kala has 2,155 stars, 191 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 1,322% (30,648 vs 2,155 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; kala is written in Go under MIT. xxl-job has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, kala 9%. 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 (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 | kala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-09 | 2025-12-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 191 |
| 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 kala if
- You want the kala feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kala fits your workflow better
About xxl-job
XXL JOB XXL JOB, a distributed task scheduling framework. Home Page Introduction XXL JOB is a distributed task scheduling framework. It's core design goal is to develop quickly and learn simple, lightweight, and easy to expand. Now, it's already open source, and many companies use it in production environments, real "out of the box". XXL JOB是一个分布式任务调度平台，其核心设计目标是开发迅速、学习简单、轻量级、易扩展。现已开放源代码并接入多家公司线上产品线，开箱即用。 Sponsor XXL JOB is an open source and free project, with its ongoing development made possible entirely by the support of these awesome backers. XXL JOB 是一个开源且免费项目，其正在进行的开发完全得益于支持者的支持。开源不易，前往赞助项目开发 金牌赞助方 阿里云…
read the full xxl-job overview →
About kala
Kala Kala is a simplistic, modern, and performant job scheduler written in Go. Features: Single binary No dependencies JSON over HTTP API Job Stats Configurable Retries Scheduling with ISO 8601 Date and Interval notation Dependent Jobs Persistent with several database drivers Web UI Note that it is not battle tested. Use at your own risk. Kala was inspired by the desire for a simpler Chronos (developed by Airbnb). Kala is Chronos for the rest of us. If you need fault tolerance, distributed features, massive scale, then I recommend checking out Chronos. This is designed to be the Chronos for start ups. Installing…
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or kala more popular?
xxl-job has 30,648 GitHub stars and kala has 2,155. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and kala free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and kala under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and kala?
xxl-job is written in Java and kala 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 kala?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,648 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.