# dotnet/orleans

Cloud Native application framework for .NET

Repository: https://github.com/dotnet/orleans
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/orleans
Homepage: https://dotnet.github.io/orleans/
Language: C#
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: actor-model, distributed-actors, distributed-systems, cloud-computing, concurrency, orleans, cloud-native, actors, dotnet
Last push: 2026-08-26T23:39:18+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 97/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 94, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4275, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 43, "gap_med": 22.0, "n_releases_24m": 15}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 10844, forks 2134 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:44.478037+00:00)

## What it is
Microsoft Orleans is a cross-platform .NET framework for building robust, scalable distributed applications using the Virtual Actor Model. It extends familiar .NET concepts like objects, interfaces, and async/await to multi-server environments, handling clustering, persistence, transactions, and fault tolerance.

## Use cases
- build scalable stateful cloud services in .NET
- model domain entities as virtual actors with stable identities
- add elastic scaling and load balancing to stateful services
- implement event sourcing and ACID transactions across distributed state
- run durable jobs, timers, and reminders in a cluster
- stream and process events between producers and consumers
- migrate single-server .NET apps to distributed cloud architecture

## When to choose
- you are building stateful distributed services on .NET
- you want actor-model semantics without managing actor lifecycles
- you need built-in clustering, persistence, and fault tolerance
- you want turn-based concurrency to avoid locking
- you need proven large-scale production usage (used across Microsoft)

## When to avoid
- your stack is not .NET
- you need stateless microservices only
- you want fine-grained control over actor placement and messaging
- your team is unfamiliar with actor-model thinking
- you need a lightweight library rather than a full runtime framework

## Facets
- artifact type: framework
- maturity: stable
- function: microservices, concurrency, streaming, caching, middleware
- domain: microservices, cloud-computing, backend, web-development
- platform: dotnet, cross-platform, cloud, windows
- tags: actor-model, virtual-actors, grains, distributed-actors, cloud-native, event-sourcing, transactions, reminders, stateful-services, linux, macos, docker, kubernetes

## Member repositories
- dotnet/orleans (main) score 97

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:44.478037+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:17:30.260680+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/dotnet/orleans (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:44.478037+00:00, sha 48db1d29a77a)
  - homepage: https://dotnet.github.io/orleans/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:16:26.856141+00:00, sha 9b4401b9f26e)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.