head to head · open source
conductor vs nextflow
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nextflow has 3,487 stars, 811 forks, 422 open issues and last shipped yesterday. conductor leads on adoption by 824% (32,207 vs 3,487 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; nextflow is written in Groovy under Apache-2.0. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, nextflow 23%. 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 | nextflow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Groovy |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 811 |
| 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 nextflow if
- You want the nextflow feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Groovy
- You evaluated both and nextflow 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 nextflow
Nextflow is an open source workflow system for scalable, portable, and reproducible computational pipelines. It is written in Groovy, released under Apache 2.0, and built around a domain specific language for data driven workflows. The project lives in the infrastructure and operations ecosystem, especially orchestration and scheduling, and its topics include bioinformatics, cloud, Docker, high performance computing, and reproducible research.
read the full nextflow overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or nextflow more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and nextflow has 3,487. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and nextflow free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and nextflow under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and nextflow?
conductor is written in Java and nextflow in Groovy. 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 nextflow?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose nextflow if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.