head to head · open source
Temporal vs Dagu
Temporal has 24,173 GitHub stars, 2,072 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Dagu has 4,542 stars, 394 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Temporal leads on adoption by 432% (24,173 vs 4,542 stars). Temporal is written in Go under MIT; Dagu is written in Go under GPL-3.0. Temporal has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Dagu 9%. Temporal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (durable-execution), 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 | Dagu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 4.5K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 394 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Temporal if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Dagu if
- You want the Dagu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Dagu fits your workflow better
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 →
About Dagu
Docs · CLI · API · Examples · Live demo (username/password: demouser) · Discord Dagu Dagu is a local first workflow engine for operations and internal automation. It is open source and self hostable: a single binary with a built in Web UI, no external database or message broker, running on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Define DAGs in a declarative YAML format. It natively supports shell commands, Docker containers, Kubernetes Jobs, remote commands via SSH, and more through Dagu Actions. Dagu turns existing scripts and runbooks into production workflows with scheduling, retries, human tasks, and run history. It runs…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Temporal or Dagu more popular?
Temporal has 24,173 GitHub stars and Dagu has 4,542. Temporal has the larger community by that measure.
Are Temporal and Dagu free?
Both are open source. Temporal is licensed under MIT and Dagu under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Temporal and Dagu?
Temporal is written in Go and Dagu 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 Dagu?
Choose Temporal if you want the larger community (24,173 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Dagu if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.