head to head · open source
rancher vs flowable-engine
rancher has 26,035 GitHub stars, 3,227 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. flowable-engine has 9,635 stars, 2,904 forks, 411 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. rancher leads on adoption by 170% (26,035 vs 9,635 stars). rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0; flowable-engine is written in Java under Apache-2.0. rancher has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, flowable-engine 30%. rancher 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.
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Side by side
| rancher | flowable-engine | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 9.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 2.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rancher if
- You weight community size — 26K 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 flowable-engine if
- You want the flowable-engine feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and flowable-engine fits your workflow better
About rancher
Rancher Rancher is an open source container management platform built for organizations that deploy containers in production. Rancher makes it easy to run Kubernetes everywhere, meet IT requirements, and empower DevOps teams. Stable Release v2.15.1 rancher/rancher:v2.15.1 / rancher/rancher:stable Read the full release notes. To get automated notifications of our latest release, you can watch the announcements category in our forums, or subscribe to the RSS feed Quick Start sudo docker run d restart=unless stopped p 80:80 p 443:443 privileged rancher/rancher Open your browser to Installation See…
read the full rancher overview →
About flowable-engine
Flowable ======== Homepage: flowable / flowəb(ə)l / a compact and highly efficient workflow and Business Process Management (BPM) platform for developers, system admins and business users. a lightning fast, tried and tested BPMN process engine, CMMN case engine and DMN rule engine written in Java. It is Apache 2.0 licensed open source, with a committed community. can run embedded in a Java application, or as a service on a server, a cluster, and in the cloud. It integrates perfectly with Spring. With a rich Java and REST API, it is the ideal engine for orchestrating human or system activities. Introduction…
read the full flowable-engine overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or flowable-engine more popular?
rancher has 26,035 GitHub stars and flowable-engine has 9,635. rancher has the larger community by that measure.
Are rancher and flowable-engine free?
Both are open source. rancher is licensed under Apache-2.0 and flowable-engine under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rancher and flowable-engine?
rancher is written in Go and flowable-engine 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, rancher or flowable-engine?
Choose rancher if you want the larger community (26,035 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose flowable-engine if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.