head to head · open source
LiveKit vs cadence
LiveKit has 21,994 GitHub stars, 2,526 forks, 189 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cadence has 9,535 stars, 931 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. LiveKit leads on adoption by 131% (21,994 vs 9,535 stars). LiveKit is written in Go under Apache-2.0; cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0. LiveKit has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, cadence 10%. LiveKit 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.
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Side by side
| LiveKit | cadence | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 9.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 931 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LiveKit if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 LiveKit
LiveKit: Realtime infrastructure for voice, video, and AI agents LiveKit is an open source platform for building voice, video, and physical AI agents. This repository is the LiveKit server: a scalable, distributed WebRTC SFU that moves realtime audio, video, and data between people, devices, and AI models. The SDKs, agents frameworks, and companion services are linked in the table at the bottom of this page. LiveKit's server is written in Go, using the awesome Pion WebRTC implementation. [!IMPORTANT] If you're building Voice AI, LiveKit Agents is the SDK for code first realtime voice agents. STT, LLM, TTS, turn…
read the full LiveKit overview →
About cadence
Cadence Cadence Workflow is an open source platform since 2017 for building and running scalable, fault tolerant, and long running workflows. This repository contains the core orchestration engine and tools including CLI, schema managment, benchmark and canary. Getting Started Cadence backend consists of multiple services, a database (Cassandra/MySQL/PostgreSQL) and optionally Kafka+Elasticsearch. As a user, you need a worker which contains your workflow implementation. Once you have Cadence backend and worker(s) running, you can trigger workflows by using SDKs or via CLI. 1. Start cadence backend components…
read the full cadence overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LiveKit or cadence more popular?
LiveKit has 21,994 GitHub stars and cadence has 9,535. LiveKit has the larger community by that measure.
Are LiveKit and cadence free?
Both are open source. LiveKit is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cadence under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between LiveKit and cadence?
LiveKit is written in Go 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, LiveKit or cadence?
Choose LiveKit if you want the larger community (21,994 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cadence if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.