head to head · open source
conductor vs kala
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kala has 2,156 stars, 190 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. conductor leads on adoption by 1,394% (32,207 vs 2,156 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; kala is written in Go under MIT. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, kala 9%. 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 | kala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2025-12-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 190 |
| 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 kala if
- You want the kala feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kala 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 kala
Kala is an open source job scheduler written in Go under the MIT license. It sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Orchestration & Scheduling category and describes itself as a modern service for scheduling jobs. The project ships as a single binary with no external dependencies, exposes a JSON over HTTP API, includes a web UI, and supports persistent storage through several database drivers.
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or kala more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and kala has 2,156. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and kala free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kala under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and kala?
conductor is written in Java and kala 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 kala?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.