#4141st of 102 in Backends, databases and hosting
dagger
Programmable engine for building, testing and shipping code in containers
- Stars
- 16.6k
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Last commit
- Nov 2026
- Last release
- Oct 2026
- Language
- Go
15,567 on 21 Apr 202616,609 on 10 Nov 2026
From GitHub's daily star counts.
Checked on GitHub.
Overview
Dagger runs build, test and deploy pipelines as typed functions that execute in containers, using the same definitions locally, in CI or in the cloud. Pipelines are written with SDKs for Go, Python, TypeScript, PHP, Java, .NET, Elixir and Rust, with content-addressed caching and OpenTelemetry traces for every operation. The README does not mention AI features, so its fit for this list is as delivery infrastructure.
Who it is for: Platform and DevOps engineers replacing shell scripts and CI YAML with code
Strengths
- SDKs for 8 languages generated from one API schema
- Content-addressed incremental caching shared across local and CI runs
- Every operation emits OpenTelemetry spans; exports to Jaeger or Honeycomb
- Same pipeline behavior on laptop, CI server and cloud
Weaknesses
- Requires a Linux container runtime such as Docker, including Docker Desktop on macOS and Windows
- README describes no AI or LLM features, so it is off-topic for most entries here
- Pipelines must be rewritten as Dagger code; no import of existing CI YAML is described
- Not a hosting platform; it does not deploy or run your apps
What it needs
- Needs Linux container runtime (e.g. Docker)
Quick answers
Is dagger open source?
Yes. Its code is on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license.
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