head to head · open source
xxl-job vs waverless
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. waverless has 633 stars, 66 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 28 days ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 4,728% (30,561 vs 633 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; waverless is written in Go under Apache-2.0. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, waverless 10%. waverless 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 | waverless | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 633 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 | 2026-08-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 66 |
| 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 waverless if
- You want the waverless feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and waverless 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 waverless
Waverless High performance Serverless GPU Task Orchestration System 🌐 wavespeed.ai • 📐 Architecture • 📖 User Guide • 🔧 Developer Guide Features 🚀 Pull based Architecture Workers actively pull tasks for better load balancing 🔌 RunPod Compatible Zero code migration from runpod python SDK ☸️ Multi Provider Kubernetes, Novita Serverless, Docker backends 📊 Smart Autoscaling Queue depth, priority, and resource aware scaling 🛡️ Graceful Shutdown Zero task loss during rolling updates Architecture Quick Start API Example Documentation License MIT License WaveSpeed AI — AI image & video generation platform. Try it …
read the full waverless overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or waverless more popular?
xxl-job has 30,561 GitHub stars and waverless has 633. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and waverless free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and waverless under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and waverless?
xxl-job is written in Java and waverless 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 waverless?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,561 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose waverless if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.