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LittleHorse vs Durable Execution

Durable Execution platforms make long-running functions survive crashes. LittleHorse does that too, but also gives you a visual process graph, event-native architecture, workflow versioning, and human-in-the-loop tasks out of the box.

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Learn how LittleHorse goes beyond durability with business visibility and event integration.

Our Business-as-Code Approach

Durability is a feature of Business-as-Code, not the whole platform.

Read: Basics of Workflows

Understand the fundamentals of workflow orchestration and why durability alone is not enough.

Side-by-side

How We Compare

LittleHorse

Business-as-Code to define business processes or long-running technical processes as code, govern them, and make them durable.

Durable Execution

Define long-running technical processes as code and make them durable.

LittleHorse

Users who switched to LH from Durable Execution did so because they experienced faster developer velocity.

Durable Execution

Our customers who used both platforms report more difficulty developing with Durable Execution.

LittleHorse

Visual process graph shows end-to-end business flow.

Durable Execution

No end-to-end business flow: only intermediate states and failures.

LittleHorse

Workflow changes emitted to Kafka to allow extracting business insights.

Durable Execution

Workflow execution updates are simply retry cache information, not business data.

LittleHorse

Strong support for versioned workflows.

Durable Execution

Versioning workflows can corrupt state of older processes.

LittleHorse

Native integrations with Kafka Connect.

Durable Execution

DIY integrations to run workflows from Kafka.

LittleHorse

Native human-in-the-loop tasks.

Durable Execution

DIY human-in-the-loop tasks and state management.

LittleHorse

CorrelatedEvents support signaling running workflows with fanout or without knowing the workflow ID.

Durable Execution

Signaling a running workflow requires knowing the workflow ID, increasing state management requirements.

LittleHorse

Provides a-la-carte streaming, integration, and auth services along with workflow.

Durable Execution

Workflow platform only.

What else to know

  • Durable Execution is a feature of LittleHorse, not a competing category. LittleHorse provides durability plus business visibility, event integration, and lifecycle management.
  • Business-as-Code can function as a platform or a tool. Durable Execution is a tool that solves a narrow problem.
  • End-to-end visual representation of a process in a way that product managers and business stakeholders can understand is something Durable Execution platforms do not offer.
  • LittleHorse's event-native architecture means workflows can react to Kafka events, emit business events, and participate in streaming topologies without custom plumbing.

Start Codifying Your Business.

Durability is table stakes. The platform is what pays off.

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