head to head · open source
workflow-core vs obelisk
workflow-core has 5,926 GitHub stars, 1,262 forks, 133 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. obelisk has 755 stars, 19 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped today. workflow-core leads on adoption by 685% (5,926 vs 755 stars). workflow-core is written in C# under MIT; obelisk is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. workflow-core has attracted 21% as many forks as stars, obelisk 3%. obelisk 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.
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Side by side
| workflow-core | obelisk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.9K | ★ 755 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C# | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 19 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick workflow-core if
- You weight community size — 5.9K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick obelisk if
- You want the obelisk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and obelisk fits your workflow better
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 →
About obelisk
Obelisk is a durable and deterministic workflow engine written in Rust and built on the WASM Component Model, aimed at developers who need replayable, crash resilient background jobs, periodic tasks, batch work, and webhook driven pipelines.
read the full obelisk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is workflow-core or obelisk more popular?
workflow-core has 5,926 GitHub stars and obelisk has 755. workflow-core has the larger community by that measure.
Are workflow-core and obelisk free?
Both are open source. workflow-core is licensed under MIT and obelisk under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between workflow-core and obelisk?
workflow-core is written in C# and obelisk 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, workflow-core or obelisk?
Choose workflow-core if you want the larger community (5,926 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose obelisk if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.