head to head · open source
Archon vs Trigger
Archon has 23,807 GitHub stars, 3,518 forks, 321 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trigger has 16,699 stars, 1,523 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Archon leads on adoption by 43% (23,807 vs 16,699 stars). Archon is written in TypeScript under MIT; Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Archon has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Trigger 9%. Archon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, 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
| Archon | Trigger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 17K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 Trigger if
- You want the Trigger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Trigger fits your workflow better
About Archon
Archon The first open source harness builder for AI coding. Make AI coding deterministic and repeatable. Archon is a workflow engine for AI coding agents. Define your development processes as YAML workflows planning, implementation, validation, code review, PR creation and run them reliably across all your projects. Like what Dockerfiles did for infrastructure and GitHub Actions did for CI/CD Archon does for AI coding workflows. Think n8n, but for software development. Why Archon? When you ask an AI agent to "fix this bug", what happens depends on the model's mood. It might skip planning. It might forget to run…
read the full Archon overview →
About Trigger
Build and deploy fully‑managed AI agents and workflows Website Docs Issues Example projects Feature requests Public roadmap Self hosting About Trigger.dev Trigger.dev is the open source platform for building AI workflows in TypeScript. Long running tasks with retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling. The platform designed for building AI agents Build AI agents using all the frameworks, services and LLMs you're used to, deploy them to Trigger.dev and get durable, long running tasks with retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling out of the box. Long running without timeouts : Execute your…
read the full Trigger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Archon or Trigger more popular?
Archon has 23,807 GitHub stars and Trigger has 16,699. Archon has the larger community by that measure.
Are Archon and Trigger free?
Both are open source. Archon is licensed under MIT and Trigger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Archon and Trigger?
Archon is written in TypeScript and Trigger in TypeScript. 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 Trigger?
Choose Archon if you want the larger community (23,807 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Trigger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.