Spring Cloud Contract Moves to Stubborn.sh – What You Need to Know

Spring Cloud Contract, the consumer-driven contract testing tool for microservices, is being transferred out of the Spring ecosystem. The project's maintenance and ownership now belong to Marcin Grzejszczak, one of its original creators, under the banner of Stubborn.sh.

This means Spring Cloud Contract will be removed from all future Spring Cloud release trains. The Spring team will no longer ship updates or bug fixes for the project within existing release trains either. If you're currently using Spring Cloud Contract, you should plan a migration to the Stubborn.sh fork to keep receiving support.

Why This Matters

Spring Cloud Contract has been a key tool for teams practicing consumer-driven contracts (CDC) to ensure reliable communication between microservices. Its removal from the official Spring release train signals a shift in the ecosystem's priorities. For teams deeply invested in the Spring Cloud stack, this adds another dependency to manage outside the standard release cycle.

Grzejszczak led the project from day one and spent nearly a decade on the Spring team. Handing the reins back to him is a logical move — he knows the codebase better than anyone. The Stubborn.sh project will likely continue development under his direction, but the split means you'll need to explicitly opt in to the new distribution.

What to Do Next

• Review your current Spring Cloud Contract usage and identify any dependencies on the Spring release train version.
• Follow the official announcement from Stubborn.sh for migration instructions and updated artifacts.
• Update your build configuration to point to the new Stubborn.sh repository once it's available.

This is a straightforward transition for most teams — the API and core behavior shouldn't change drastically. But ignoring it will leave you on an unsupported version, which is a risk for any production system.