head to head · open source
workflow-core vs obelisk
workflow-core has 5,939 GitHub stars, 1,260 forks, 133 open issues and last shipped yesterday. obelisk has 766 stars, 19 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped yesterday. workflow-core leads on adoption by 675% (5,939 vs 766 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 2%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| workflow-core | obelisk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.9K | ★ 766 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C# | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| 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 Workflow Core is a light weight embeddable workflow engine targeting .NET Standard. Think: long running processes with multiple tasks that need to track state. It supports pluggable persistence and concurrency providers to allow for multi node clusters. Announcements New related project: Conductor Conductor is a stand alone workflow server as opposed to a library that uses Workflow Core internally. It exposes an API that allows you to store workflow definitions, track running workflows, manage events and define custom steps and scripts for usage in your workflows. Documentation See Tutorial here…
read the full workflow-core overview →
About obelisk
Obelisk A deterministic workflow engine built on the WASM Component Model. [!WARNING] Pre release : Expect changes in CLI, gRPC, WIT, and database schema. Obelisk in Action The Stargazers app features: A webhook listening to GitHub star events. Activities for interacting with Turso DB, OpenAI, and GitHub. A workflow orchestrating the activities. Obelisk fly.io deployment tool features: A complete workflow for deploying Obelisk apps on fly.io Cleanup / compensating actions on failure What's Included Obelisk Runtime : A single binary executing deterministic workflows, activities, and webhook endpoints, persisting…
read the full obelisk 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 workflow-core or obelisk more popular?
workflow-core has 5,939 GitHub stars and obelisk has 766. 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 (5,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose obelisk if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.