head to head · open source
conductor vs vibe-kanban
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,009 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped today. vibe-kanban has 28,118 stars, 3,013 forks, 540 open issues and last shipped yesterday. conductor leads on adoption by 15% (32,207 vs 28,118 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; vibe-kanban is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, vibe-kanban 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.
← all 13541 open source comparisons
Side by side
| conductor | vibe-kanban | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 28K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Java | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| 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 vibe-kanban if
- You want the vibe-kanban feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and vibe-kanban 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 vibe-kanban
Vibe Kanban is an open source, Apache 2.0 kanban board written in Rust that lets software engineers plan work as issues and hand each issue to a coding agent such as Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI or Amp inside an isolated workspace.
read the full vibe-kanban overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Orchestration & Scheduling projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Orchestration & Scheduling field.
Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or vibe-kanban more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and vibe-kanban has 28,118. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and vibe-kanban free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and vibe-kanban under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and vibe-kanban?
conductor is written in Java and vibe-kanban in Rust. 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 vibe-kanban?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose vibe-kanban if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.