head to head · open source
cadence vs astron-rpa
cadence has 9,446 GitHub stars, 915 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. astron-rpa has 5,542 stars, 598 forks, 55 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. cadence leads on adoption by 70% (9,446 vs 5,542 stars). cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0; astron-rpa is written in Python under Apache-2.0. cadence has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, astron-rpa 11%. cadence was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| cadence | astron-rpa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.4K | ★ 5.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 915 | ⑂ 598 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cadence if
- You weight community size — 9.4K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick astron-rpa if
- You want the astron-rpa feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and astron-rpa fits your workflow better
About cadence
Cadence is an open source orchestration engine for running asynchronous, long running business logic in a fault tolerant way. Written in Go under the Apache 2.0 license, it lives in the distributed systems and workflow automation space, and the project has been open source since 2017. This repository holds the core engine plus supporting tools: the CLI, schema management, a benchmark suite, and a canary. Client libraries for Go and Java are official, while Python and Ruby SDKs come from the community, and iWF can be layered on top as a DSL framework.
read the full cadence overview →
About astron-rpa
AstronRPA is an open source, enterprise grade Robotic Process Automation desktop application written in Java and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It provides a visual designer for low code and no code development, letting users build automation workflows through drag and drop rather than hand written scripts. The project lives in the iflytek/astron rpa repository and sits in the broader iFlytek Astron ecosystem, alongside Astron Agent, which serves as its native agent platform. Topics attached to the repository — agent, ai, llm, mcp, low code, no code, enterprise, data privacy, and on premise — describe tha…
read the full astron-rpa overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cadence or astron-rpa more popular?
cadence has 9,446 GitHub stars and astron-rpa has 5,542. cadence has the larger community by that measure.
Are cadence and astron-rpa free?
Both are open source. cadence is licensed under Apache-2.0 and astron-rpa under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cadence and astron-rpa?
cadence is written in Go and astron-rpa in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cadence or astron-rpa?
Choose cadence if you want the larger community (9,446 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose astron-rpa if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.