head to head · open source
Temporal vs Trigger
Temporal has 23,133 GitHub stars, 1,905 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trigger has 16,324 stars, 1,462 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Temporal leads on adoption by 42% (23,133 vs 16,324 stars). Temporal is written in Go under MIT; Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Temporal has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Trigger 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 (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 | Trigger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 Trigger if
- You want the Trigger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Trigger 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 Trigger
Trigger is an open source TypeScript platform for building and deploying AI agents and workflow tasks. It lives in the infrastructure, orchestration, and scheduling ecosystem, and it is positioned as a way to run long running AI tasks without typical serverless timeout constraints. The project provides a software development kit, a deployment target, and operational features such as retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling.
read the full Trigger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Temporal or Trigger more popular?
Temporal has 23,133 GitHub stars and Trigger has 16,324. Temporal has the larger community by that measure.
Are Temporal and Trigger free?
Both are open source. Temporal is licensed under MIT and Trigger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Temporal and Trigger?
Temporal is written in Go and Trigger in TypeScript. 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 Trigger?
Choose Temporal if you want the larger community (23,133 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Trigger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.