head to head · open source
conductor vs resque-scheduler
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. resque-scheduler has 1,746 stars, 477 forks, 87 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. conductor leads on adoption by 1,745% (32,207 vs 1,746 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; resque-scheduler is written in Ruby under MIT. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, resque-scheduler 27%. 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 | resque-scheduler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 477 |
| 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 resque-scheduler if
- You want the resque-scheduler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and resque-scheduler 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 resque-scheduler
resque scheduler is a light weight job scheduling system built on top of Resque, an extension that adds support for queueing items in the future for Ruby applications that already run background jobs through Resque.
read the full resque-scheduler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or resque-scheduler more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and resque-scheduler has 1,746. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and resque-scheduler free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and resque-scheduler under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and resque-scheduler?
conductor is written in Java and resque-scheduler in Ruby. 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 resque-scheduler?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose resque-scheduler if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.