head to head · open source
cadence vs open-claude-cowork
cadence has 9,536 GitHub stars, 930 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped yesterday. open-claude-cowork has 4,309 stars, 702 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. cadence leads on adoption by 121% (9,536 vs 4,309 stars). cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0; open-claude-cowork is written in JavaScript under MIT. cadence has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, open-claude-cowork 16%. 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 | open-claude-cowork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.5K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-05-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 930 | ⑂ 702 |
| 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 open-claude-cowork if
- You want the open-claude-cowork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and open-claude-cowork 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 open-claude-cowork
Open Claude Cowork An open source desktop chat application powered by Claude Agent SDK and Composio Tool Router. Automate your work end to end across desktop and all your work apps in one place. Get your free API key to get started → Pst. hey, you, join our stargazers :) What's Inside This repo includes two powerful AI tools: Both include 500+ app integrations via Composio (Gmail, Slack, GitHub, Google Drive, and more). Quick Start Open Claude Cowork Then run in two terminals: 🦑 Secure Clawdbot Select "Terminal chat" to test, or "Start gateway" to connect WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal/iMessage. See Secure Clawdbot…
read the full open-claude-cowork overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cadence or open-claude-cowork more popular?
cadence has 9,536 GitHub stars and open-claude-cowork has 4,309. cadence has the larger community by that measure.
Are cadence and open-claude-cowork free?
Both are open source. cadence is licensed under Apache-2.0 and open-claude-cowork under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cadence and open-claude-cowork?
cadence is written in Go and open-claude-cowork in JavaScript. 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 open-claude-cowork?
Choose cadence if you want the larger community (9,536 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose open-claude-cowork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.