head to head · open source
cadence vs superplane
cadence has 9,536 GitHub stars, 930 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped yesterday. superplane has 8,766 stars, 690 forks, 617 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cadence leads on adoption by 9% (9,536 vs 8,766 stars). cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0; superplane is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. cadence has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, superplane 8%. superplane 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| cadence | superplane | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.5K | ★ 8.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 930 | ⑂ 690 |
| 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 superplane if
- You want the superplane feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and superplane 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 superplane
Website · Docs · Discord · Blog · Event [!NOTE] SuperPlane is in beta. We are building the Open source factory for one shot engineering . Follow the latest releases, explore open issues and see how you can contribute as the SuperPlane matures. About Open source factory for one shot engineering. SuperPlane turns high confidence backlog issues into verified, review ready pull requests so engineers can focus on work that needs judgment. SuperPlane lets AI agents fully automate routine development work. It coordinates coding agents, source control, CI, review, approvals and feedback in one visible system so…
read the full superplane overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Automation projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Automation field.
Frequently asked questions
Is cadence or superplane more popular?
cadence has 9,536 GitHub stars and superplane has 8,766. cadence has the larger community by that measure.
Are cadence and superplane free?
Both are open source. cadence is licensed under Apache-2.0, and superplane has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between cadence and superplane?
cadence is written in Go and superplane 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, cadence or superplane?
Choose cadence if you want the larger community (9,536 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose superplane if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.