head to head · open source
cadence vs magic
cadence has 9,446 GitHub stars, 915 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. magic has 1,192 stars, 176 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. cadence leads on adoption by 692% (9,446 vs 1,192 stars). cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0; magic is written in C# under MIT. cadence has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, magic 15%. 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 | magic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.4K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 915 | ⑂ 176 |
| 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 magic if
- You want the magic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and magic 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 magic
Magic is an MIT licensed low code platform and MCP server, written in C for .NET 10, that turns plain English into a working full stack application — database, secure API, business logic and frontend — running on your own hardware with no vendor lock in.
read the full magic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cadence or magic more popular?
cadence has 9,446 GitHub stars and magic has 1,192. cadence has the larger community by that measure.
Are cadence and magic free?
Both are open source. cadence is licensed under Apache-2.0 and magic under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cadence and magic?
cadence is written in Go and magic in C#. 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 magic?
Choose cadence if you want the larger community (9,446 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose magic if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.