head to head · open source
Trigger vs Dagu
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars, 1,464 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped today. Dagu has 4,036 stars, 339 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trigger leads on adoption by 305% (16,345 vs 4,036 stars). Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; Dagu is written in Go under GPL-3.0. Trigger has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Dagu 8%. Trigger 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 | Dagu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 339 |
| 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 Dagu if
- You want the Dagu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Dagu 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 Dagu
Dagu is local first workflow engine. It targets operations and internal automation. It lives in Infrastructure & Operations / Orchestration & Scheduling. It is Go project under GPL 3.0. It provides single binary with built in Web UI. It needs no external database or message broker. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. GitHub metadata lists 3982 stars, 332 forks, 0 contributors, 67 open issues, repo age 0 years, last push 2026 09 14.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trigger or Dagu more popular?
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars and Dagu has 4,036. Trigger has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trigger and Dagu free?
Both are open source. Trigger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Dagu under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trigger and Dagu?
Trigger is written in TypeScript and Dagu 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, Trigger or Dagu?
Choose Trigger if you want the larger community (16,345 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Dagu if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.