head to head · open source
conductor vs Hatchet
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hatchet has 7,957 stars, 504 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped yesterday. conductor leads on adoption by 305% (32,207 vs 7,957 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; Hatchet is written in Go under MIT. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Hatchet 6%. conductor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (distributed-systems, durable-execution), 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 | Hatchet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 8.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 504 |
| 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 Hatchet if
- You want the Hatchet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Hatchet 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 Hatchet
Hatchet is an MIT licensed, Go based orchestration engine for background tasks, AI agents, and durable workflows, built for teams that need reliable queueing, retries, and observability while writing workers in Python, TypeScript, Go, or Ruby.
read the full Hatchet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or Hatchet more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and Hatchet has 7,957. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and Hatchet free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Hatchet under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and Hatchet?
conductor is written in Java and Hatchet 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 Hatchet?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Hatchet if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.