head to head · open source
Temporal vs sdk-go
Temporal has 23,180 GitHub stars, 1,914 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped today. sdk-go has 970 stars, 351 forks, 229 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Temporal leads on adoption by 2,290% (23,180 vs 970 stars). Temporal is written in Go under MIT; sdk-go is written in Go under MIT. Temporal has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, sdk-go 36%. Temporal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (durable-execution, golang, service-bus, workflow-automation), 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 | sdk-go | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 970 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 351 |
| 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 sdk-go if
- You want the sdk-go feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sdk-go 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 sdk-go
The Temporal Go SDK is the official Go framework for authoring workflows and activities against Temporal, a distributed, scalable, durable, and highly available orchestration engine that executes asynchronous long running business logic in a resilient way, and it is aimed at Go developers who need durable execution inside production services.
read the full sdk-go overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Temporal or sdk-go more popular?
Temporal has 23,180 GitHub stars and sdk-go has 970. Temporal has the larger community by that measure.
Are Temporal and sdk-go free?
Both are open source. Temporal is licensed under MIT and sdk-go under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Temporal and sdk-go?
Temporal is written in Go and sdk-go 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 sdk-go?
Choose Temporal if you want the larger community (23,180 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose sdk-go if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.