head to head · open source
conductor vs dolphinscheduler
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dolphinscheduler has 14,482 stars, 5,092 forks, 128 open issues and last shipped yesterday. conductor leads on adoption by 122% (32,207 vs 14,482 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; dolphinscheduler is written in Java under Apache-2.0. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, dolphinscheduler 35%. conductor 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
| conductor | dolphinscheduler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 5.1K |
| 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 dolphinscheduler if
- You want the dolphinscheduler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and dolphinscheduler 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 dolphinscheduler
Apache DolphinScheduler is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Java based data orchestration platform for data engineers, analytics teams and platform operators who need to schedule complex task dependencies across data pipelines without building the control plane themselves.
read the full dolphinscheduler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or dolphinscheduler more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and dolphinscheduler has 14,482. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and dolphinscheduler free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dolphinscheduler under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and dolphinscheduler?
conductor is written in Java and dolphinscheduler in Java. 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 dolphinscheduler?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dolphinscheduler if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.