head to head · open source
Trigger vs livecontext-ce
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars, 1,464 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped today. livecontext-ce has 502 stars, 59 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. Trigger leads on adoption by 3,156% (16,345 vs 502 stars). Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; livecontext-ce is written in Java under AGPL-3.0. Trigger has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, livecontext-ce 12%. Trigger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (ai, ai-agents, automation, mcp), 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 | livecontext-ce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 502 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 59 |
| 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 livecontext-ce if
- You want the livecontext-ce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and livecontext-ce 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 livecontext-ce
LiveContext CE is the self hosted, AGPL 3.0 Community Edition of the LiveContext AI automation platform, a single Docker deployed service where a team describes a job in chat and gets back a readable workflow, scoped AI agents and a small app the team actually uses.
read the full livecontext-ce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Trigger or livecontext-ce more popular?
Trigger has 16,345 GitHub stars and livecontext-ce has 502. Trigger has the larger community by that measure.
Are Trigger and livecontext-ce free?
Both are open source. Trigger is licensed under Apache-2.0 and livecontext-ce under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Trigger and livecontext-ce?
Trigger is written in TypeScript and livecontext-ce 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 livecontext-ce?
Choose Trigger if you want the larger community (16,345 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose livecontext-ce if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.