head to head · open source
conductor vs Temporal
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Temporal has 23,133 stars, 1,905 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped yesterday. conductor leads on adoption by 39% (32,207 vs 23,133 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; Temporal is written in Go under MIT. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Temporal 8%. Temporal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (distributed-systems, durable-execution, microservice-orchestration, 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 | Temporal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| 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 Temporal if
- You want the Temporal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Temporal 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 Temporal
Temporal is a durable execution platform for building resilient applications with workflows. It lives in the infrastructure and operations ecosystem, specifically within orchestration and scheduling. The server executes units of application logic called Workflows and automatically handles intermittent failures by retrying failed operations. Temporal originated as a fork of Uber's Cadence and is developed by Temporal Technologies, a startup formed by the creators of Cadence.
read the full Temporal overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or Temporal more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and Temporal has 23,133. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and Temporal free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Temporal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and Temporal?
conductor is written in Java and Temporal 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 Temporal?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Temporal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.