head to head · open source
Trigger vs dolphinscheduler
Trigger has 16,324 GitHub stars, 1,462 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dolphinscheduler has 14,482 stars, 5,092 forks, 128 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trigger leads on adoption by 13% (16,324 vs 14,482 stars). Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; dolphinscheduler is written in Java under Apache-2.0. Trigger has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dolphinscheduler 35%. Trigger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | dolphinscheduler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 5.1K |
| 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 dolphinscheduler if
- You want the dolphinscheduler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and dolphinscheduler 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 dolphinscheduler
Apache DolphinScheduler is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Java based data orchestration platform for data engineers, analytics teams and platform operators who need to schedule complex task dependencies across data pipelines without building the control plane themselves.
read the full dolphinscheduler overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trigger or dolphinscheduler more popular?
Trigger has 16,324 GitHub stars and dolphinscheduler has 14,482. Trigger has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trigger and dolphinscheduler free?
Both are open source. Trigger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dolphinscheduler under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trigger and dolphinscheduler?
Trigger is written in TypeScript and dolphinscheduler in Java. 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 dolphinscheduler?
Choose Trigger if you want the larger community (16,324 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dolphinscheduler if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.