head to head · open source
workflow-core vs tork
workflow-core has 5,939 GitHub stars, 1,260 forks, 133 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. tork has 821 stars, 66 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. workflow-core leads on adoption by 623% (5,939 vs 821 stars). workflow-core is written in C# under MIT; tork is written in Go under MIT. workflow-core has attracted 21% as many forks as stars, tork 8%. workflow-core 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 | tork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.9K | ★ 821 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | C# | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 66 |
| 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 tork if
- You want the tork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tork 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 tork
Features • Quick Start • Installation • Architecture • Jobs • Tasks • Configuration • REST API • Web UI • Extend Tork is a highly scalable, general purpose workflow engine. It lets you define jobs consisting of multiple tasks, each running inside its own container. You can run Tork on a single machine (standalone mode) or set it up in a distributed environment with multiple workers. Features REST API – Submit jobs, query status, cancel/restart Horizontally scalable – Add workers to handle more tasks Task isolation – Tasks run in containers for isolation, idempotency, and resource limits Automatic recovery –…
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Frequently asked questions
Is workflow-core or tork more popular?
workflow-core has 5,939 GitHub stars and tork has 821. workflow-core has the larger community by that measure.
Are workflow-core and tork free?
Both are open source. workflow-core is licensed under MIT and tork under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between workflow-core and tork?
workflow-core is written in C# and tork in Go. 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 tork?
Choose workflow-core if you want the larger community (5,939 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose tork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.