head to head · open source
Archon vs obelisk
Archon has 23,505 GitHub stars, 3,474 forks, 321 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. obelisk has 755 stars, 19 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped today. Archon leads on adoption by 3,013% (23,505 vs 755 stars). Archon is written in TypeScript under MIT; obelisk is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. Archon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, obelisk 3%. obelisk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (workflow-engine), 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
| Archon | obelisk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 755 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 19 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Archon if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick obelisk if
- You want the obelisk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and obelisk fits your workflow better
About Archon
Archon is an open source workflow engine for AI coding agents, written in TypeScript and released under the MIT license. It lives in the AI coding ecosystem, alongside tools such as Claude Code, and is distributed through the Bun runtime and the GitHub CLI. The project describes itself as a harness builder: it lets a developer encode a development process as a YAML workflow and then run that workflow reliably across projects. Workflows are stored in a .archon/workflows/ directory and committed to the repository, so the same definition can be invoked from the CLI, a web UI, Slack, Telegram, or GitHub.…
read the full Archon overview →
About obelisk
Obelisk is a durable and deterministic workflow engine written in Rust and built on the WASM Component Model, aimed at developers who need replayable, crash resilient background jobs, periodic tasks, batch work, and webhook driven pipelines.
read the full obelisk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Archon or obelisk more popular?
Archon has 23,505 GitHub stars and obelisk has 755. Archon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Archon and obelisk free?
Both are open source. Archon is licensed under MIT and obelisk under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Archon and obelisk?
Archon is written in TypeScript and obelisk in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Archon or obelisk?
Choose Archon if you want the larger community (23,505 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose obelisk if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.