head to head · open source
ActivePieces vs cadence
ActivePieces has 25,369 GitHub stars, 4,427 forks, 573 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cadence has 9,538 stars, 930 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ActivePieces leads on adoption by 166% (25,369 vs 9,538 stars). ActivePieces is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0. ActivePieces has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, cadence 10%. ActivePieces was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (workflow-automation), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| ActivePieces | cadence | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 9.5K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.4K | ⑂ 930 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ActivePieces if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cadence if
- You want the cadence feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cadence fits your workflow better
About ActivePieces
An open source replacement for Zapier Documentation 🌪️ Create a Piece 🖉 Deploy 🔥 Join Discord 🤯 Welcome to Activepieces All in one AI automation designed to be extensible through a type safe pieces framework written in TypeScript . When you contribute pieces to Activepieces they become automatically available as MCP servers that you can use with LLMs through Claude Desktop, Cursor or Windsurf! 🔥 Why Activepieces is Different: 💖 Loved by Everyone : Intuitive interface and great experience for both technical and non technical users with a quick learning curve. 🌐 Open Ecosystem: All pieces are open source…
read the full ActivePieces overview →
About cadence
Cadence Cadence Workflow is an open source platform since 2017 for building and running scalable, fault tolerant, and long running workflows. This repository contains the core orchestration engine and tools including CLI, schema managment, benchmark and canary. Getting Started Cadence backend consists of multiple services, a database (Cassandra/MySQL/PostgreSQL) and optionally Kafka+Elasticsearch. As a user, you need a worker which contains your workflow implementation. Once you have Cadence backend and worker(s) running, you can trigger workflows by using SDKs or via CLI. 1. Start cadence backend components…
read the full cadence overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ActivePieces or cadence more popular?
ActivePieces has 25,369 GitHub stars and cadence has 9,538. ActivePieces has the larger community by that measure.
Are ActivePieces and cadence free?
Both are open source. ActivePieces has no licence declared in this registry, and cadence is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between ActivePieces and cadence?
ActivePieces is written in TypeScript and cadence in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ActivePieces or cadence?
Choose ActivePieces if you want the larger community (25,369 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose cadence if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.