head to head · open source
xxl-job vs kala
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. kala has 2,156 stars, 190 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 1,318% (30,562 vs 2,156 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; kala is written in Go under MIT. xxl-job has attracted 38% 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 | 2026-07-21 | 2025-12-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 190 |
| 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 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 kala
Kala is an open source job scheduler written in Go under the MIT license. It sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Orchestration & Scheduling category and describes itself as a modern service for scheduling jobs. The project ships as a single binary with no external dependencies, exposes a JSON over HTTP API, includes a web UI, and supports persistent storage through several database drivers.
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or kala more popular?
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars and kala has 2,156. 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 (30,562 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.