head to head · open source
puck vs cadence
puck has 13,342 GitHub stars, 977 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. cadence has 9,446 stars, 915 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. puck leads on adoption by 41% (13,342 vs 9,446 stars). puck is written in TypeScript under MIT; cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0. puck has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, cadence 10%. 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
| puck | cadence | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 977 | ⑂ 915 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick puck if
- You weight community size — 13K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cadence if
- You want the cadence feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cadence fits your workflow better
About puck
Puck is a modular, open source visual editor for React.js that lets teams assemble their own drag and drop editing experiences from their existing React components, and it is aimed at developers building internal systems or commercial products who want to own both the editor and the data behind it.
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is puck or cadence more popular?
puck has 13,342 GitHub stars and cadence has 9,446. puck has the larger community by that measure.
Are puck and cadence free?
Both are open source. puck is licensed under MIT and cadence under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between puck and cadence?
puck is written in TypeScript and cadence in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, puck or cadence?
Choose puck if you want the larger community (13,342 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cadence if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.