head to head · open source
Temporal vs Dagu
Temporal has 23,180 GitHub stars, 1,914 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped today. Dagu has 4,036 stars, 339 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Temporal leads on adoption by 474% (23,180 vs 4,036 stars). Temporal is written in Go under MIT; Dagu is written in Go under GPL-3.0. Temporal has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Dagu 8%. Temporal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (durable-execution), 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
| Temporal | Dagu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 339 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Temporal if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Dagu if
- You want the Dagu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Dagu fits your workflow better
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 →
About Dagu
Dagu is local first workflow engine. It targets operations and internal automation. It lives in Infrastructure & Operations / Orchestration & Scheduling. It is Go project under GPL 3.0. It provides single binary with built in Web UI. It needs no external database or message broker. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. GitHub metadata lists 3982 stars, 332 forks, 0 contributors, 67 open issues, repo age 0 years, last push 2026 09 14.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Temporal or Dagu more popular?
Temporal has 23,180 GitHub stars and Dagu has 4,036. Temporal has the larger community by that measure.
Are Temporal and Dagu free?
Both are open source. Temporal is licensed under MIT and Dagu under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Temporal and Dagu?
Temporal is written in Go and Dagu 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, Temporal or Dagu?
Choose Temporal if you want the larger community (23,180 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Dagu if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.