head to head · open source
cadence vs ByteChef
cadence has 9,446 GitHub stars, 915 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ByteChef has 1,004 stars, 170 forks, 455 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cadence leads on adoption by 841% (9,446 vs 1,004 stars). cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0; ByteChef is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence. cadence has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, ByteChef 17%. ByteChef was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (java), 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
| cadence | ByteChef | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.4K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 915 | ⑂ 170 |
| 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 ByteChef if
- You want the ByteChef feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and ByteChef 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 ByteChef
ByteChef is an open source, Java based platform in the Productivity & Utilities / Automation category that unifies AI agent orchestration and workflow automation for developers, low code builders, and enterprises that need both capabilities in one system.
read the full ByteChef overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cadence or ByteChef more popular?
cadence has 9,446 GitHub stars and ByteChef has 1,004. cadence has the larger community by that measure.
Are cadence and ByteChef free?
Both are open source. cadence is licensed under Apache-2.0, and ByteChef has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between cadence and ByteChef?
cadence is written in Go and ByteChef in Java. 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 ByteChef?
Choose cadence if you want the larger community (9,446 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ByteChef if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.