head to head · open source
xxl-job vs swarm-cronjob
xxl-job has 30,643 GitHub stars, 11,494 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. swarm-cronjob has 889 stars, 77 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 3,347% (30,643 vs 889 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 9%. 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 | ★ 889 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 77 |
| 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 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 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…
read the full swarm-cronjob overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or swarm-cronjob more popular?
xxl-job has 30,643 GitHub stars and swarm-cronjob has 889. 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 (30,643 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.