shouldiuse.io

Categories

VERDICT

Foojay Review

Depends

Should I use Foojay?

A place for Friends of OpenJDK - foojay.io

· 4 days ago

Use it if you're a Java developer who wants free JDK discovery, OpenJDK news, and CVE explainers — it's free and sponsor-funded. Skip it if you need an SLA-backed service; the Disco API has documented downtime.

Confidence

Medium. Based on ~50 public sources; several Yelp/Tripadvisor results are an unrelated Kalamazoo restaurant named FooJay.

Ratings

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Feature depth
  • Support quality
  • Security postureNo findings; publishes CVE analyses

Pricing

Free

Community

ModelNot disclosed
Monthly feesNot disclosed
HardwareNot disclosed
Free tierYes

Best for

  • Java devs hunting JDK builds
  • Gradle users resolving toolchains
  • Teams tracking OpenJDK and CVE news

Not for

  • Non-Java stacks — strictly OpenJDK-focused
  • Anyone needing paid support or SLAs
  • Buyers shopping for software — nothing to purchase here
  • Mission-critical pipelines without API fallbacks

Gotchas - check before you buy

medium

Disco API has had repeated outages; Gradle users recommend building fallbacks

medium

No paid support tier; help is community-only

low

Sponsor-funded (Azul, Snyk, JFrog) — editorial independence worth sanity-checking

Pros and cons

Pros

  • Free JDK discovery via Disco API, built into Gradle toolchains
  • 2,250+ deep Java articles, podcasts, and CVE explainers
  • Backed by Azul, Datadog, JFrog, Payara, Snyk advisory board
  • Independent community body, not a vendor sales channel

Cons

  • Disco API downtime documented; users request fallbacks
  • Java-only: worthless outside the JVM ecosystem
  • Sponsor-dependent funding; sustainability publicly questioned

Sources & method

- 9 sources - No known vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.

official x2review x3security x1news x3

Key stats

  • Value for money: 5/5

    Rating

  • Free

    Starting price

  • 9

    Sources

  • Analyzed

  • Value for money: 5/5. Entirely free; sponsors pay the bills
  • Ease of use: 4/5. Drops into Gradle via resolver plugin
  • Feature depth: 3/5. JDK discovery plus deep content, not a platform
  • Support quality: 2/5. Disco API outages; community-only support
  • Security posture. No findings; publishes CVE analyses
  • Free Price Sponsor-funded community site
  • 2020 Founded Launched September 2020
  • 2,250+ articles Content Migrated to a Hugo static site
  • 99 episodes Podcast As of June 2026

Pricing

Community

Free

  • Disco API for JDK discovery
  • Articles, podcasts, pedia

Security

No known vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed.

What users say

Developers value the content and Gradle integration but report Disco API reliability problems.

“foojay disco API is often down: consider a fallback?”
GitHub, gradle/foojay-toolchains

Companies that use it

  • Gradle
Full analysis

Based on ~50 public sources; several Yelp/Tripadvisor results are an unrelated Kalamazoo restaurant named FooJay.

Free, sponsor-backed Java hub with a handy Disco API for JDK discovery — fine to use, risky to depend on for uptime.

Methodology

Based on ~50 public sources; several Yelp/Tripadvisor results are an unrelated Kalamazoo restaurant named FooJay.

Read how a report is made.

Sources

  1. Foojay.io homepagefoojay.io
    official
  2. About Foojay — Who we arefoojay.io
    official
  3. foojay disco API is often down — GitHub issuegithub.com
    review
  4. Foojay advisory board: Azul, Datadog, JFrog, Payara, Snykfoojay.io
    news
  5. Migrating a 2,250-article Java community site to Hugoreddit.com
    review
  6. Crunchbase: Friends of OpenJDK (Foojay.io)crunchbase.com
    news
  7. foojay — a place for friends of OpenJDK (launch coverage)marxsoftware.blogspot.com
    news
  8. foojay-resolver used-by (Maven Central)mvnrepository.com
    review
  9. Foojay product security pagefoojay.io
    security

Rate this review

Anonymous. You can change your vote.

Loading votes…

Comments

One queue. No nested comments. Give a display name first. Limit: 200 words per comment and 7 comments per day. You can edit or delete yours.

Save a name to write a comment.

0 / 200 words

No comments yet.