head to head · open source
conductor vs erda
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. erda has 2,755 stars, 382 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. conductor leads on adoption by 1,069% (32,207 vs 2,755 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; erda is written in Go under Apache-2.0. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, erda 14%. 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 | erda | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 382 |
| 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 erda if
- You want the erda 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 erda 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 erda
Erda is an open source, enterprise grade cloud native application platform written in Go and licensed under Apache 2.0. It lives in the Kubernetes ecosystem and is organized as a set of repositories that provide a backend, a React user portal, protocol definitions, infrastructure components, pipeline actions, and addons. The project was created by Terminus and aims to support the development of microservice applications through an application centric model.
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or erda more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and erda has 2,755. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and erda free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and erda under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and erda?
conductor is written in Java and erda 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, conductor or erda?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose erda if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.