head to head · open source
xxl-job vs sidequest
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. sidequest has 1,015 stars, 25 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 2,911% (30,561 vs 1,015 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; sidequest is written in TypeScript under LGPL-3.0. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, sidequest 2%. 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 | 2026-07-21 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 25 |
| 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 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 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 on…
read the full sidequest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or sidequest more popular?
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars and sidequest has 1,015. 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 (30,561 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.