head to head · open source
xxl-job vs workflow-core
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars, 11,486 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. workflow-core has 5,926 stars, 1,262 forks, 133 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. xxl-job leads on adoption by 416% (30,562 vs 5,926 stars). xxl-job is written in Java under GPL-3.0; workflow-core is written in C# under MIT. xxl-job has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, workflow-core 21%. workflow-core 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
| xxl-job | workflow-core | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Java | C# |
| Last push | 2026-07-21 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick xxl-job if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 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 xxl-job
XXL JOB is a distributed task scheduling framework written in Java and released under the GPL 3.0 licence, built for teams that need scheduled jobs to run reliably across a cluster of machines rather than inside a single application process.
read the full xxl-job 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is xxl-job or workflow-core more popular?
xxl-job has 30,562 GitHub stars and workflow-core has 5,926. xxl-job has the larger community by that measure.
Are xxl-job and workflow-core free?
Both are open source. xxl-job is licensed under GPL-3.0 and workflow-core under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between xxl-job and workflow-core?
xxl-job 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, xxl-job or workflow-core?
Choose xxl-job if you want the larger community (30,562 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose workflow-core if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.