Self-hosted Automation: what licence are you actually agreeing to

“Self-hosted” and “open source” are not the same promise, and the lists that recommend these projects rarely separate them. This page sorts 33 automation projects by the licence you are actually agreeing to, as read on 2026-08-20.

18 of 33 are permissive: run them, change them, keep your changes to yourself. 6 are AGPL, where serving a modified copy over a network obliges you to publish those changes, which is the clause that catches people who self-host for a team. 3 are not open source at all, carrying a proprietary or restricted-use licence. The remaining 6 are ordinary copyleft.

Project	Licence	What that means	Stars	Maintenance	Language
Huginn	MIT	Permissive, no strings	49,823	Active	Ruby
Apache Airflow	Apache-2.0	Permissive, no strings	46,543	Active	Python
changedetection.io	Apache-2.0	Permissive, no strings	33,260	Active	Python
Kestra	Apache-2.0	Permissive, no strings	27,857	Active	Java
Activepieces	MIT	Permissive, no strings	23,921	Active	TypeScript
Leon	MIT	Permissive, no strings	17,448	Active	TypeScript
Gotenberg	MIT	Permissive, no strings	12,890	Active	Go
Healthchecks	BSD-3-Clause	Permissive, no strings	10,264	Active	Python
StackStorm	Apache-2.0	Permissive, no strings	6,522	Active	Python
Cronicle	MIT	Permissive, no strings	5,801	Active	JavaScript
Dittofeed	MIT	Permissive, no strings	2,908	Active	TypeScript
Fredy	Apache-2.0	Permissive, no strings	1,429	Active	JavaScript
µTask	BSD-3-Clause	Permissive, no strings	1,394	Active	Go
Kibitzr	MIT	Permissive, no strings	715	Active	Python
gocron	MIT	Permissive, no strings	549	Active	Go
flowctl	Apache-2.0	Permissive, no strings	330	Active	Go
feedmixer	WTFPL	Permissive, no strings	237	Slowing	Python
HomeButler	MIT	Permissive, no strings	188	Active	Go
Dagu	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	3,780	Active	Go
Matchering	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	2,609	Active	Python
Discount Bandit	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	729	Active	PHP
BookBounty	MPL-2.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	289	Active	Python
Mylar3	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	102	Active	Python
LazyLibrarian	GPL-3.0	Copyleft, publish your changes	-	Not measured	Python
Automatisch	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	13,938	Slowing	JavaScript
pyLoad	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	3,836	Active	Python
OliveTin	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	3,761	Active	Go
Cronmaster	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	1,348	Active	TypeScript
ChiefOnboarding	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	923	Active	Python
HandBrake Web	AGPL-3.0	AGPL, network copyleft	794	Active	TypeScript
n8n	Apache-2.0, Commons-Clause	Not open source, restricted use	201,271	Active	TypeScript
Ctfreak	⊘ Proprietary	Not open source, restricted use	-	Not measured	Unknown
CxReports	⊘ Proprietary	Not open source, restricted use	-	Not measured	Docker

What the licence column means

Permissive (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD, ISC): do what you like, keep changes private.
Copyleft (GPL, LGPL, MPL, EPL): changes you distribute must ship their source.
AGPL, network copyleft: the same, and running it for others over a network counts as distribution. This is the one that surprises people who self-host for a team or a side business.
Source-available (SSPL, BUSL, Elastic, Commons Clause): not open source. Reading and self-use are usually fine; offering it as a service is not.
Other / unstated: the dataset lists no licence we could classify. Check the repo before you rely on it.

The Maintenance column is a second, independent check: the age of the most recent commit on the default branch, read from the GitHub API on 2026-08-20. Active is within 180 days, Slowing is 180 to 365, Dormant is over a year, Archived means the maintainer marked the repo read-only, and Not measured means the project is hosted outside GitHub so the check does not apply.

Source data from awesome-selfhosted-data, used under CC BY-SA 3.0. Licence family grouping and maintenance status are computed by this site (from the upstream licence fields and the GitHub API) and are not part of the upstream dataset. Licence classification is a summary, not legal advice: check the project’s own LICENSE file before you rely on it. This page is published under the same licence.