head to head · open source
conductor vs dbos-transact-py
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dbos-transact-py has 1,577 stars, 94 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped yesterday. conductor leads on adoption by 1,942% (32,207 vs 1,577 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; dbos-transact-py is written in Python under MIT. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, dbos-transact-py 6%. conductor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (durable-execution, microservice-orchestration, workflow-engine), 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
| conductor | dbos-transact-py | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 94 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick conductor if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dbos-transact-py if
- You want the dbos-transact-py feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dbos-transact-py fits your workflow better
About conductor
Conductor is an Apache 2.0 licensed, event driven agentic workflow engine written in Java that provides durable and highly resilient execution for applications and AI agents, aimed at teams running microservices, AI agents, and adaptive workflow graphs that need orchestration they can version, inspect, and recover.
read the full conductor overview →
About dbos-transact-py
DBOS Transact is an open source Python library for durable workflows backed by Postgres. It lives in the Python infrastructure and operations ecosystem, under orchestration and scheduling, and is distributed as the dbos package on PyPI under the MIT license. The project lets developers annotate ordinary functions as workflows and steps, then checkpoint state in Postgres so interrupted programs resume from completed work instead of starting over.
read the full dbos-transact-py overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or dbos-transact-py more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and dbos-transact-py has 1,577. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and dbos-transact-py free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dbos-transact-py under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and dbos-transact-py?
conductor is written in Java and dbos-transact-py in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, conductor or dbos-transact-py?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dbos-transact-py if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.