head to head · open source
Temporal vs workflow-core
Temporal has 24,173 GitHub stars, 2,072 forks, 956 open issues and last shipped yesterday. workflow-core has 5,939 stars, 1,260 forks, 133 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Temporal leads on adoption by 307% (24,173 vs 5,939 stars). Temporal is written in Go under MIT; workflow-core is written in C# under MIT. Temporal has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, workflow-core 21%. Temporal was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Temporal | workflow-core | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Temporal if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 Temporal
Temporal—durable execution platform Introduction • Getting Started • Contributing • Temporal Docs • Temporal 101 Introduction Temporal is a durable execution platform that enables developers to build scalable applications without sacrificing productivity or reliability. The Temporal server executes units of application logic called Workflows in a resilient manner that automatically handles intermittent failures, and retries failed operations. Temporal is a mature technology that originated as a fork of Uber's Cadence. It is developed by Temporal Technologies, a startup by the creators of…
read the full Temporal overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Temporal or workflow-core more popular?
Temporal has 24,173 GitHub stars and workflow-core has 5,939. Temporal has the larger community by that measure.
Are Temporal and workflow-core free?
Both are open source. Temporal is licensed under MIT and workflow-core under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Temporal and workflow-core?
Temporal is written in Go 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, Temporal or workflow-core?
Choose Temporal if you want the larger community (24,173 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose workflow-core if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.