Apache Airflow vs Kestra

A side-by-side comparison of Apache Airflow and Kestra — stars, license, self-host difficulty, deploy options, and what each replaces.

TaglineProgrammatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows as Python DAGsEvent-driven orchestration platform for scheduled and API-triggered workflows
CategoryAutomation & iPaaSAutomation & iPaaS
ReplacesWorkatoZapier, Workato
GitHub stars46k27k
LanguagePythonJava
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Self-host difficulty
4/5
Involved
3/5
Moderate
Deploy options
Docker Compose
Kubernetes
Manual
Docker
Docker Compose
Kubernetes
Manual
Managed hosting
Last updated4 days ago6 days ago
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Apache Airflow

Programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows as Python DAGs

Kestra

Event-driven orchestration platform for scheduled and API-triggered workflows