head to head · open source
Trigger vs hcom
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars, 1,464 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped today. hcom has 507 stars, 79 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Trigger leads on adoption by 3,124% (16,345 vs 507 stars). Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; hcom is written in Rust under MIT. Trigger has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, hcom 16%. Trigger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai, ai-agents, automation), 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 | hcom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 507 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 79 |
| 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 hcom if
- You want the hcom feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and hcom 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 hcom
hcom is a Rust CLI that lets AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Kilo Code, Pi, Oh My Pi, Antigravity, Cursor, Kimi, Copilot, and Gemini message, watch, and spawn one another across terminals, aimed at developers who already run more than one agent at a time.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trigger or hcom more popular?
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars and hcom has 507. Trigger has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trigger and hcom free?
Both are open source. Trigger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and hcom under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trigger and hcom?
Trigger is written in TypeScript and hcom in Rust. 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 hcom?
Choose Trigger if you want the larger community (16,345 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose hcom if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.