head to head · open source
cadence vs n8n-helm-chart
cadence has 9,536 GitHub stars, 930 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped yesterday. n8n-helm-chart has 709 stars, 246 forks, 64 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. cadence leads on adoption by 1,245% (9,536 vs 709 stars). cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0; n8n-helm-chart is written in Go Template under Apache-2.0. cadence has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, n8n-helm-chart 35%. cadence was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (workflow-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
| cadence | n8n-helm-chart | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.5K | ★ 709 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go Template |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 930 | ⑂ 246 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cadence if
- You weight community size — 9.5K 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 n8n-helm-chart if
- You want the n8n-helm-chart feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go Template
- You evaluated both and n8n-helm-chart fits your workflow better
About cadence
Cadence Cadence Workflow is an open source platform since 2017 for building and running scalable, fault tolerant, and long running workflows. This repository contains the core orchestration engine and tools including CLI, schema managment, benchmark and canary. Getting Started Cadence backend consists of multiple services, a database (Cassandra/MySQL/PostgreSQL) and optionally Kafka+Elasticsearch. As a user, you need a worker which contains your workflow implementation. Once you have Cadence backend and worker(s) running, you can trigger workflows by using SDKs or via CLI. 1. Start cadence backend components…
read the full cadence overview →
About n8n-helm-chart
[!NOTE] The n8n Helm chart is growing in popularity. We're looking for additional conscientious and accurate maintainers and contributors to improve and maintain this chart, governance, development, documentation and CI/CD workflows. If you're interested in making a difference, join the discussion. n8n Helm Chart for Kubernetes n8n is an extendable workflow automation tool. The Helm chart source code location is github.com/8gears/n8n helm chart Requirements Before you start, make sure you have the following tools ready: Helm = 3.8 external Postgres DB or embedded SQLite (SQLite is bundled with n8n) Helmfile…
read the full n8n-helm-chart overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cadence or n8n-helm-chart more popular?
cadence has 9,536 GitHub stars and n8n-helm-chart has 709. cadence has the larger community by that measure.
Are cadence and n8n-helm-chart free?
Both are open source. cadence is licensed under Apache-2.0 and n8n-helm-chart under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cadence and n8n-helm-chart?
cadence is written in Go and n8n-helm-chart in Go Template. 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 n8n-helm-chart?
Choose cadence if you want the larger community (9,536 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose n8n-helm-chart if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.