head to head · open source
frigate vs cadence
frigate has 35,947 GitHub stars, 3,601 forks, 95 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cadence has 9,444 stars, 913 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. frigate leads on adoption by 281% (35,947 vs 9,444 stars). frigate is written in TypeScript under MIT; cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0. frigate has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, cadence 10%. frigate 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 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| frigate | cadence | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.6K | ⑂ 913 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick frigate if
- You weight community size — 36K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cadence if
- You want the cadence feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cadence fits your workflow better
About frigate
Frigate NVR is a complete and local network video recorder built for Home Assistant, with AI object detection. It uses OpenCV and Tensorflow to run realtime object detection locally on IP cameras, so video analysis happens on your own hardware instead of a vendor cloud. Project lives in the Home Assistant home automation ecosystem, with tight integration through a custom component, and it talks over MQTT so other systems can consume its events. Written mainly in TypeScript, MIT licensed, 8 years old, 35,896 stars and 3,596 forks on GitHub.
read the full frigate overview →
About cadence
Cadence is an open source orchestration engine for running asynchronous, long running business logic in a fault tolerant way. Written in Go under the Apache 2.0 license, it lives in the distributed systems and workflow automation space, and the project has been open source since 2017. This repository holds the core engine plus supporting tools: the CLI, schema management, a benchmark suite, and a canary. Client libraries for Go and Java are official, while Python and Ruby SDKs come from the community, and iWF can be layered on top as a DSL framework.
read the full cadence overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Automation projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Automation field.
Frequently asked questions
Is frigate or cadence more popular?
frigate has 35,947 GitHub stars and cadence has 9,444. frigate has the larger community by that measure.
Are frigate and cadence free?
Both are open source. frigate is licensed under MIT and cadence under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between frigate and cadence?
frigate is written in TypeScript and cadence 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, frigate or cadence?
Choose frigate if you want the larger community (35,947 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cadence if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.