head to head · open source
xxl-job vs swarm-cronjob
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. swarm-cronjob has 884 stars, 75 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xxl-job leads on adoption by 3,357% (30,561 vs 884 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; swarm-cronjob is written in Go under MIT. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, swarm-cronjob 8%. swarm-cronjob 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 | swarm-cronjob | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 884 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 75 |
| 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 swarm-cronjob if
- You want the swarm-cronjob feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and swarm-cronjob 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 swarm-cronjob
About swarm cronjob lets you run recurring jobs on Docker Swarm by defining cron style schedules with service labels. It watches your services through the Docker API, keeps its configuration in sync automatically, and creates scheduled job runs across the cluster without requiring a separate scheduler. [!TIP] Want to be notified of new releases? Check out 🔔 Diun (Docker Image Update Notifier) project! Documentation Documentation can be found on Contributing Want to contribute? Awesome! The most basic way to show your support is to star the project, or to raise issues. You can also support this project by becomin…
read the full swarm-cronjob overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or swarm-cronjob more popular?
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars and swarm-cronjob has 884. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and swarm-cronjob free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and swarm-cronjob under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and swarm-cronjob?
xxl-job is written in Java and swarm-cronjob 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 swarm-cronjob?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose swarm-cronjob if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.