head to head · open source

Temporal vs dtm

Temporal has 24,189 GitHub stars, 2,072 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dtm has 10,933 stars, 997 forks, 87 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. Temporal leads on adoption by 121% (24,189 vs 10,933 stars). Temporal is written in Go under MIT; dtm is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. Temporal has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dtm 9%. Temporal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (golang), 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.

Temporal ★ 24K dtm ★ 11K category Infrastructure & Operations

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Side by side

Temporal dtm
GitHub stars ★ 24K ★ 11K
License MIT BSD-3-Clause
Written in Go Go
Last push 2026-11-04 2026-01-03
Forks ⑂ 2.1K ⑂ 997
Self-hosting Yes Yes
Data ownership Your server Your server

pick Temporal if

  • You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
  • You want the MIT license terms
  • Your stack matches Go
  • You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance

full Temporal profile →

pick dtm if

  • You want the dtm feature set and don't need the biggest community
  • You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
  • Your stack matches Go
  • You evaluated both and dtm fits your workflow better

full dtm profile →

About Temporal

Temporal—durable execution platform Introduction • Getting Started • Contributing • Temporal Docs • Temporal 101 Introduction Temporal is a durable execution platform that enables developers to build scalable applications without sacrificing productivity or reliability. The Temporal server executes units of application logic called Workflows in a resilient manner that automatically handles intermittent failures, and retries failed operations. Temporal is a mature technology that originated as a fork of Uber's Cadence. It is developed by Temporal Technologies, a startup by the creators of…

read the full Temporal overview →

About dtm

English 简体中文 Distributed Transactions Manager What is DTM DTM is a distributed transaction framework which provides cross service eventual data consistency. It provides saga, tcc, xa, 2 phase message, outbox, workflow patterns for a variety of application scenarios. It also supports multiple languages and multiple store engine to form up a transaction as following: Who's using DTM (partial) Tencent Bytedance Ivydad More Features Support for multiple transaction modes: SAGA, TCC, XA, Workflow, Outbox Multiple languages support: SDK for Go, Java, PHP, C , Python, Nodejs Better Outbox: 2 phase messages, a more…

read the full dtm overview →

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Frequently asked questions

Is Temporal or dtm more popular?

Temporal has 24,189 GitHub stars and dtm has 10,933. Temporal has the larger community by that measure.

Are Temporal and dtm free?

Both are open source. Temporal is licensed under MIT and dtm under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.

What is the difference between Temporal and dtm?

Temporal is written in Go and dtm 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 dtm?

Choose Temporal if you want the larger community (24,189 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dtm if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.