Gradle vs uv
Gradle
gradle.org
uv
docs.astral.shSide by side
| Figure | Gradle | uv |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Package Managers | 8.7 (#11) | 8.9 (#4) |
| Dependency resolution | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Gradle lists integrations or support for Android Studio, Ant, Maven and Ivy repositories, and Checkstyle, CodeNarc, PMD, and JaCoCo. | The documentation lists integrations and guides for Docker, Jupyter, marimo, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Pre-commit, PyTorch, FastAPI, and several package registries. |
| Intended users | Gradle describes itself as the open-source build system of choice for Java, Android, and Kotlin developers, from startups to large enterprises. | Astral says it builds high-performance developer tools for the Python ecosystem to help developers ship software faster. |
| Lockfile support | Yes | Yes |
| Offline installation | Yes | Yes |
| Package formats | Maven,Ivy,flat directory | source distributions,wheels,requirements.txt,pylock.toml |
| Private registry auth | Yes | Yes |
| Purpose | Gradle Build Tool automates building software of any type, size, or complexity. | uv is an extremely fast Python package and project manager written in Rust. |
| Security | Gradle includes dependency verification; the maker says open-source security fixes are limited by its end-of-life policy, while its Security Subscription offers prioritized fixes under SLA and extended maintenance. | uv uses TLS with rustls and bundled Mozilla root certificates by default to verify HTTPS connections. |
| Supported platforms | Windows,macOS,Linux | macOS,Linux,Windows,CPython,PyPy,Pyodide,GraalPy |
| Workspace support | Yes | Yes |
Plans
In their own words
Gradle
Gradle Build Tool is a free, open-source system for automating software builds across projects of different types and sizes. Build logic can use either Kotlin DSL or Groovy DSL. Incremental builds, caching and parallel task execution support the build process, while Gradle downloads and manages transitive dependencies from Maven- and Ivy-compatible repositories. The Gradle Wrapper can provision a build environment and specify the Gradle version used by a project. Its ecosystem covers JVM, Android, C/C++, Swift, Objective-C and assembler projects, and it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. The Tooling API lets IDEs and other tools inspect projects, run builds, receive progress events and cancel operations. Listed support includes Android Studio and Ant, plus Checkstyle, CodeNarc, PMD and JaCoCo. Gradle includes dependency verification. The maker says open-source security fixes are limited by its end-of-life policy; its Security Subscription offers prioritized fixes under SLA and extended maintenance, but does not guarantee a clean scanner report when findings come from third-party libraries.
uv
uv is a Python package and project manager for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Written in Rust, it manages dependencies and environments, with lockfiles and workspaces, and can install, list, pin, or uninstall Python versions. It also runs scripts with dependencies and runs or installs command-line tools from Python packages. Its pip-compatible interface is intended to cover work done by tools such as pip, pip-tools, pipx, poetry, pyenv, twine, and virtualenv, though its commands do not exactly match those tools. The documentation describes uv as 10–100x faster than pip. It supports source distributions, wheels, requirements.txt, and pylock.toml, as well as offline installation and private registry authentication. For package selection, its default first-index strategy limits candidates to the first index where a package is found. Credentials are not stored in uv.lock, but uv currently stores them in a plaintext file; native system secret storage is an experimental preview. The free plan is free.