head to head · open source
rancher vs Temporal
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars, 3,225 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Temporal has 24,138 stars, 2,068 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rancher leads on adoption by 8% (26,031 vs 24,138 stars). rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Temporal is written in Go under MIT. rancher has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Temporal 9%. Temporal 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 | Temporal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 24K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| 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 Temporal if
- You want the Temporal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Temporal 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 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or Temporal more popular?
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars and Temporal has 24,138. rancher has the larger community by that measure.
Are rancher and Temporal free?
Both are open source. rancher is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Temporal under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rancher and Temporal?
rancher is written in Go and Temporal 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, rancher or Temporal?
Choose rancher if you want the larger community (26,031 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Temporal if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.