head to head · open source
Skyvern vs cadence
Skyvern has 23,020 GitHub stars, 2,165 forks, 234 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cadence has 9,444 stars, 913 forks, 205 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Skyvern leads on adoption by 144% (23,020 vs 9,444 stars). Skyvern is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; cadence is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Skyvern has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, cadence 10%. Skyvern 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
| Skyvern | cadence | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 913 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Skyvern if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 Skyvern
Skyvern is an open source Python project for automating browser based workflows with LLMs and computer vision. It lives in the browser automation and AI agent ecosystem, and it provides a Playwright compatible SDK that adds AI functionality on top of Playwright. The project also includes a no code workflow builder, so technical users can work through code while non technical users can define tasks through the interface.
read the full Skyvern 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Skyvern or cadence more popular?
Skyvern has 23,020 GitHub stars and cadence has 9,444. Skyvern has the larger community by that measure.
Are Skyvern and cadence free?
Both are open source. Skyvern is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and cadence under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Skyvern and cadence?
Skyvern is written in Python 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, Skyvern or cadence?
Choose Skyvern if you want the larger community (23,020 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cadence if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.