head to head · open source
Trigger vs atom
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars, 1,464 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped today. atom has 901 stars, 94 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Trigger leads on adoption by 1,714% (16,345 vs 901 stars). Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; atom is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Trigger has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, atom 10%. 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, scheduler), 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 | atom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 901 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 94 |
| 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 atom if
- You want the atom feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and atom 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 atom
Atom Agent is an open source, self hosted AI agent workforce platform, licensed AGPL 3.0 and written in Python, that lets teams delegate routine work to specialty agents under default on governance checks — and it is aimed at organisations that want agent accountability, verifiable outcomes, and data ownership on their own hardware.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trigger or atom more popular?
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars and atom has 901. Trigger has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trigger and atom free?
Both are open source. Trigger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and atom under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trigger and atom?
Trigger is written in TypeScript and atom 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 atom?
Choose Trigger if you want the larger community (16,345 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose atom if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.