head to head · open source
Temporal vs Hatchet
Temporal has 23,133 GitHub stars, 1,905 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hatchet has 7,957 stars, 504 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Temporal leads on adoption by 191% (23,133 vs 7,957 stars). Temporal is written in Go under MIT; Hatchet is written in Go under MIT. Temporal has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Hatchet 6%. Temporal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (distributed-systems, durable-execution, golang), 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 | Hatchet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 8.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 504 |
| 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 Hatchet if
- You want the Hatchet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Hatchet 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 Hatchet
Hatchet is an MIT licensed, Go based orchestration engine for background tasks, AI agents, and durable workflows, built for teams that need reliable queueing, retries, and observability while writing workers in Python, TypeScript, Go, or Ruby.
read the full Hatchet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Temporal or Hatchet more popular?
Temporal has 23,133 GitHub stars and Hatchet has 7,957. Temporal has the larger community by that measure.
Are Temporal and Hatchet free?
Both are open source. Temporal is licensed under MIT and Hatchet under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Temporal and Hatchet?
Temporal is written in Go and Hatchet 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 Hatchet?
Choose Temporal if you want the larger community (23,133 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Hatchet if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.