head to head · open source
conductor vs workflow-core
conductor has 32,213 GitHub stars, 1,012 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. workflow-core has 5,926 stars, 1,262 forks, 133 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. conductor leads on adoption by 444% (32,213 vs 5,926 stars). conductor is written in Java under Apache-2.0; workflow-core is written in C# under MIT. conductor has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, workflow-core 21%. conductor was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (workflow-engine), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| conductor | workflow-core | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick conductor if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick workflow-core if
- You want the workflow-core feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and workflow-core fits your workflow better
About conductor
Conductor is an Apache 2.0 licensed, event driven agentic workflow engine written in Java that provides durable and highly resilient execution for applications and AI agents, aimed at teams running microservices, AI agents, and adaptive workflow graphs that need orchestration they can version, inspect, and recover.
read the full conductor overview →
About workflow-core
Workflow Core is a lightweight, embeddable workflow engine targeting .NET Standard, written in C and released under the MIT license. It lives in the .NET ecosystem, distributed as NuGet packages, and is built around the idea of long running processes that contain multiple tasks and must track their state between steps. Rather than running as a separate server, it is a library that is hosted inside an application, and it exposes a fluent C API for defining workflows. Workflows are expressed as a starting step followed by chained steps, and the same class can declare inputs and outputs that move data from one step …
read the full workflow-core overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Orchestration & Scheduling projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Orchestration & Scheduling field.
Frequently asked questions
Is conductor or workflow-core more popular?
conductor has 32,213 GitHub stars and workflow-core has 5,926. conductor has the larger community by that measure.
Are conductor and workflow-core free?
Both are open source. conductor is licensed under Apache-2.0 and workflow-core under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between conductor and workflow-core?
conductor is written in Java and workflow-core in C#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, conductor or workflow-core?
Choose conductor if you want the larger community (32,213 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose workflow-core if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.