head to head · open source
conductor vs Mage
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Mage has 8,823 stars, 990 forks, 624 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. conductor leads on adoption by 265% (32,207 vs 8,823 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; Mage is written in Python under Apache-2.0. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Mage 11%. 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 | Mage | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 8.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 990 |
| 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 Mage if
- You want the Mage feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Mage 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 Mage
Mage is an Apache 2.0 licensed, self hosted development environment for building, running, and managing data pipelines, aimed at data engineers, data scientists, and analytics teams who want to develop ETL, ELT, and orchestration workflows locally before scaling them.
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or Mage more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and Mage has 8,823. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and Mage free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Mage under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and Mage?
conductor is written in Java and Mage 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 Mage?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Mage if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.