head to head · open source
Trigger vs agent-framework
Trigger has 16,324 GitHub stars, 1,462 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agent-framework has 13,565 stars, 2,333 forks, 617 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trigger leads on adoption by 20% (16,324 vs 13,565 stars). Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; agent-framework is written in Python under MIT. Trigger has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, agent-framework 17%. Trigger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, orchestration), 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
| Trigger | agent-framework | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Trigger if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agent-framework if
- You want the agent-framework feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and agent-framework fits your workflow better
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 →
About agent-framework
Microsoft Agent Framework is an open, MIT licensed, multi language framework for building, orchestrating and deploying production grade AI agents and multi agent workflows in Python and .NET, aimed at teams moving agents from prototype to production.
read the full agent-framework overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trigger or agent-framework more popular?
Trigger has 16,324 GitHub stars and agent-framework has 13,565. Trigger has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trigger and agent-framework free?
Both are open source. Trigger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and agent-framework under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trigger and agent-framework?
Trigger is written in TypeScript and agent-framework in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Trigger or agent-framework?
Choose Trigger if you want the larger community (16,324 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose agent-framework if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.