SHSelfHostIndex

Conductor OSS vs Kestra

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted automation & workflows options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
CO Conductor OSS Microservices and workflow orchestration engine VS KE Kestra Declarative orchestration and scheduling platform
FeatureConductor OSSKestra
CategoryAutomation & WorkflowsAutomation & Workflows
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageJavaJava
Setup difficultyHardHard
Min. RAM2,048 MB1,024 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, bare-metaldocker, kubernetes
GitHub stars★ 32,066★ 27,575
First released20162021
ReplacesAWS Step Functions, CamundaZapier, Make

Why pick each one

Choose Conductor OSS if…

  • Battle-tested at scale
  • Language-agnostic workers
Conductor OSS details

Choose Kestra if…

  • Strong for data orchestration
  • Scalable architecture
  • Open-source license
Kestra details

Frequently asked questions

Is Conductor OSS or Kestra better?

Neither is universally better. Conductor OSS has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Conductor OSS and Kestra free and open-source?

Yes. Conductor OSS is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Kestra under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Conductor OSS and Kestra with Docker?

Conductor OSS: yes. Kestra: yes.

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