head to head · open source
Temporal vs agent-orchestrator
Temporal has 23,180 GitHub stars, 1,914 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped today. agent-orchestrator has 12,195 stars, 1,685 forks, 711 open issues and last shipped today. Temporal leads on adoption by 90% (23,180 vs 12,195 stars). Temporal is written in Go under MIT; agent-orchestrator is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Temporal has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, agent-orchestrator 14%. agent-orchestrator was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (orchestrator), 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
| Temporal | agent-orchestrator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Temporal if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agent-orchestrator if
- You want the agent-orchestrator 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 agent-orchestrator fits your workflow better
About Temporal
Temporal is a durable execution platform for building resilient applications with workflows. It lives in the infrastructure and operations ecosystem, specifically within orchestration and scheduling. The server executes units of application logic called Workflows and automatically handles intermittent failures by retrying failed operations. Temporal originated as a fork of Uber's Cadence and is developed by Temporal Technologies, a startup formed by the creators of Cadence.
read the full Temporal overview →
About agent-orchestrator
Agent Orchestrator is an open source desktop workspace for running and supervising teams of coding agents, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the agent orchestration ecosystem, alongside the coding harnesses it drives, and it is distributed as a local application rather than as a hosted service. The project describes itself as a place to plan, run, and supervise coding agents from one place, giving every coding task its own agent, workspace, and feedback loop.
read the full agent-orchestrator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Temporal or agent-orchestrator more popular?
Temporal has 23,180 GitHub stars and agent-orchestrator has 12,195. Temporal has the larger community by that measure.
Are Temporal and agent-orchestrator free?
Both are open source. Temporal is licensed under MIT and agent-orchestrator under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Temporal and agent-orchestrator?
Temporal is written in Go and agent-orchestrator 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, Temporal or agent-orchestrator?
Choose Temporal if you want the larger community (23,180 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose agent-orchestrator if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.