head to head · open source
conductor vs xxl-job
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars, 1,010 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xxl-job has 30,562 stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. conductor leads on adoption by 5% (32,207 vs 30,562 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, xxl-job 38%. conductor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (java), 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 | xxl-job | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 31K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Java | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 11K |
| 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 xxl-job if
- You want the xxl-job feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and xxl-job 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 xxl-job
XXL JOB is a distributed task scheduling framework written in Java and released under the GPL 3.0 licence, built for teams that need scheduled jobs to run reliably across a cluster of machines rather than inside a single application process.
read the full xxl-job overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or xxl-job more popular?
conductor has 32,207 GitHub stars and xxl-job has 30,562. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and xxl-job free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and xxl-job under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and xxl-job?
conductor is written in Java and xxl-job in Java. 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 xxl-job?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,207 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose xxl-job if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.