head to head · open source
Trigger vs agent-swarm
Trigger has 16,706 GitHub stars, 1,522 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. agent-swarm has 992 stars, 145 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trigger leads on adoption by 1,584% (16,706 vs 992 stars). Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; agent-swarm is written in TypeScript under MIT. Trigger has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, agent-swarm 15%. agent-swarm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), 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-swarm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 992 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 145 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Trigger if
- You weight community size — 17K 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-swarm if
- You want the agent-swarm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and agent-swarm fits your workflow better
About Trigger
Build and deploy fully‑managed AI agents and workflows Website Docs Issues Example projects Feature requests Public roadmap Self hosting About Trigger.dev Trigger.dev is the open source platform for building AI workflows in TypeScript. Long running tasks with retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling. The platform designed for building AI agents Build AI agents using all the frameworks, services and LLMs you're used to, deploy them to Trigger.dev and get durable, long running tasks with retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling out of the box. Long running without timeouts : Execute your…
read the full Trigger overview →
About agent-swarm
An engine to make your company AI Native Built by desplega.sh . [!TIP] This repo evolves every single day. Watch now → ▸ daily evolution · slack → pr · Making of agent swarm.dev is an open source operating system for AI work. A lead agent delegates goals to workers such as Claude Code or Codex. Isolated containers, shared memory, tools, schedules, and review gates preserve work across sessions. What you get A lead agent that receives work from Slack, repositories, issue trackers, email, or the API Schema validated task results for callers that need structured JSON output Deferred tasks that wake when all or any…
read the full agent-swarm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trigger or agent-swarm more popular?
Trigger has 16,706 GitHub stars and agent-swarm has 992. Trigger has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trigger and agent-swarm free?
Both are open source. Trigger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and agent-swarm under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trigger and agent-swarm?
Trigger is written in TypeScript and agent-swarm 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, Trigger or agent-swarm?
Choose Trigger if you want the larger community (16,706 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose agent-swarm if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.