head to head · open source
Automa vs cadence
Automa has 21,624 GitHub stars, 2,340 forks, 377 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. cadence has 9,444 stars, 913 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Automa leads on adoption by 129% (21,624 vs 9,444 stars). Automa is written in Vue under a custom or non-standard licence; cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Automa has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, cadence 10%. 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
| Automa | cadence | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Vue | Go |
| Last push | 2026-03-02 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 913 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Automa if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- 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 Automa
Automa browser extension. Automate browser by connect blocks. Vue project. Chrome and Firefox ecosystem. Problem: repeat browser tasks take time. User make workflow with blocks. No code write. Workflows do form fill, repetitive task, screenshot, scrape website data. Can schedule when automation execute. Marketplace share and download workflow. Automa Chrome Extension Builder make standalone Chrome extension from Automa workflow. Project lives as browser extension, not hosted automation service. The project also lists Chrome and Firefox extension downloads.
read the full Automa overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Automa or cadence more popular?
Automa has 21,624 GitHub stars and cadence has 9,444. Automa has the larger community by that measure.
Are Automa and cadence free?
Both are open source. Automa 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 Automa and cadence?
Automa is written in Vue 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, Automa or cadence?
Choose Automa if you want the larger community (21,624 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.