head to head · open source
xxl-job vs sidequest
xxl-job has 30,648 GitHub stars, 11,492 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. sidequest has 1,020 stars, 31 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 2,905% (30,648 vs 1,020 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; sidequest is written in TypeScript under LGPL-3.0. xxl-job has attracted 37% as many forks as stars, sidequest 3%. sidequest was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cron, 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 | sidequest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 31 |
| 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 sidequest if
- You want the sidequest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sidequest 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 sidequest
Sidequest Sidequest is a Redis free background job processor for Node.js . It persists jobs in the database you already run (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or MongoDB), so you get durable, distributed background processing without standing up Redis. It is a production grade BullMQ and pg boss alternative, with a built in web dashboard. At a glance Runtime: Node.js ( = 22.6.0). Does not run on Bun yet. Storage: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or MongoDB. Jobs are durable and persisted in your database , not in memory. SQLite is recommended for local development and tests. Distribution: runs across multiple nodes against…
read the full sidequest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or sidequest more popular?
xxl-job has 30,648 GitHub stars and sidequest has 1,020. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and sidequest free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and sidequest under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and sidequest?
xxl-job is written in Java and sidequest in TypeScript. 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 sidequest?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,648 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sidequest if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.