head to head · open source
cadence vs n8n-helm-chart
cadence has 9,446 GitHub stars, 915 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. n8n-helm-chart has 704 stars, 248 forks, 64 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. cadence leads on adoption by 1,242% (9,446 vs 704 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 | ★ 9.4K | ★ 704 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go Template |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 915 | ⑂ 248 |
| 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 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 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 n8n-helm-chart
The n8n Helm chart is an Apache 2.0 Kubernetes Helm chart that packages n8n, the extendable workflow automation tool, for teams that self host n8n on Kubernetes.
read the full n8n-helm-chart overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cadence or n8n-helm-chart more popular?
cadence has 9,446 GitHub stars and n8n-helm-chart has 704. 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 (9,446 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.