head to head · open source
conductor vs process-compose
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,009 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped today. process-compose has 2,779 stars, 149 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. conductor leads on adoption by 1,059% (32,207 vs 2,779 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; process-compose is written in Go under Apache-2.0. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, process-compose 5%. conductor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (orchestrator), 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 | process-compose | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 149 |
| 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 process-compose if
- You want the process-compose 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 process-compose 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 process-compose
Process Compose Process Compose is a simple and flexible scheduler and orchestrator to manage non containerized applications. Why? Because sometimes you just don't want to deal with docker files, volume definitions, networks and docker registries. Since it's written in Go, Process Compose is a single binary file and has no other dependencies. Once installed, you just need to describe your workflow using a simple YAML schema in a file called process compose.yaml : And start it by running process compose from your terminal. Check the Documentation for more advanced use cases. Features Processes execution (in parall…
read the full process-compose overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or process-compose more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and process-compose has 2,779. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and process-compose free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and process-compose under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and process-compose?
conductor is written in Java and process-compose 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 process-compose?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose process-compose if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.