# Apache Airflow vs Dagster

| Attribute | Apache Airflow | Dagster |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 69 (66% (medium)) | 70 (68% (medium)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 100 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 189 | 286 |
| adoption.github_stars | 47,054 | 16,269 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 1,607,065 | 2,028,283 |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"An open-source platform where you define workflows in Python, schedule their execution based on dependencies and timing, and monitor progress through a web interface. Widely used for data orchestration, ML operations, and infrastructure automation. It is indexed under Data Engineering Tools.","source":"https://airflow.apache.org","question":"What is Apache Airflow?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache Airflow is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://airflow.apache.org","question":"Is Apache Airflow free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Apache Airflow supports the web, Linux and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://airflow.apache.org","question":"What platforms does Apache Airflow support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache Airflow can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://airflow.apache.org","question":"Can Apache Airflow be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 56 integrations for Apache Airflow, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Databricks, Snowflake, dbt Cloud, Slack and Salesforce, plus 48 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://airflow.apache.org","question":"What does Apache Airflow integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Apache Airflow is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/apache/airflow","question":"Is Apache Airflow open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"A unified orchestration and observability platform that manages data pipelines through assets, tracks dependencies and lineage, enforces data quality, and integrates with existing tools like dbt, Snowflake, and Spark. Supports both self-hosted open-source and managed cloud deployment. It is indexed under Data Engineering Tools.","source":"https://dagster.io/pricing","question":"What is Dagster?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Dagster offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Paid plans start at $0.01. Prices are published openly on the vendor's own pricing page. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://dagster.io/pricing","question":"Is Dagster free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Dagster supports the web and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://dagster.io/pricing","question":"What platforms does Dagster support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Dagster can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://dagster.io/pricing","question":"Can Dagster be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 14 integrations for Dagster, including dbt, Snowflake, Spark, Databricks, Azure, AWS, Airbyte and Tableau, plus 6 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://dagster.io/pricing","question":"What does Dagster integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR for Dagster. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Dagster not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://dagster.io/security","question":"What security certifications does Dagster have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Yes. Dagster is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster","question":"Is Dagster open source?","confidence":0.95},{"answer":"Dagster is available worldwide. Its primary market is the United States.","source":"https://dagster.io/pricing","question":"Where is Dagster available?","confidence":0.75}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | Apache Airflow is a workflow orchestration platform that enables users to define data pipelines in Python and schedule their execution across distributed workers. It provides a web interface for visualization and monitoring, plus extensive integrations with cloud platforms and services. | An orchestration and observability platform that models data assets, manages their dependencies, and integrates lineage tracking, quality monitoring, and data cataloging for managing pipelines from development to production. |
| features.capabilities | `{"role":"orchestrator","lineage":true,"paradigm":"batch","dbt_native":true,"data_quality":true,"python_first":true,"managed_cloud":true,"connector_count":"100+","self_hosted_oss":true,"incremental_runs":true,"distributed_executor":true}` | `{"cdc":false,"role":"orchestrator","lineage":true,"paradigm":"batch","dbt_native":true,"data_quality":true,"elt_pushdown":false,"python_first":true,"managed_cloud":true,"connector_count":"28+","self_hosted_oss":true,"incremental_runs":true,"distributed_executor":true}` |
| integrations.count | 54 | 28 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Amazon Web Services"},{"name":"Microsoft Azure"},{"name":"Google Cloud Platform"},{"name":"Databricks"},{"name":"Snowflake"},{"name":"dbt Cloud"},{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Salesforce"},{"name":"Tableau"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"MongoDB"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Kubernetes"},{"name":"Docker"},{"name":"Apache Spark"},{"name":"Apache Kafka"},{"name":"Apache Cassandra"},{"name":"Apache Flink"},{"name":"Apache Druid"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"Datadog"},{"name":"Jenkins"},{"name":"GitHub"},{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Anthropic"},{"name":"Cohere"},{"name":"Pinecone"},{"name":"Weaviate"},{"name":"Qdrant"},{"name":"Oracle"},{"name":"Teradata"},{"name":"SQLite"},{"name":"Presto"},{"name":"Trino"},{"name":"ClickHouse"},{"name":"Neo4j"},{"name":"Airbyte"},{"name":"Informatica"},{"name":"Asana"},{"name":"Atlassian Jira"},{"name":"Discord"},{"name":"Telegram"},{"name":"Segment"},{"name":"PagerDuty"},{"name":"Opsgenie"},{"name":"Keycloak"},{"name":"Yandex"},{"name":"Zendesk"},{"name":"OpenLineage"},{"name":"New Relic","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"Starrocks","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"OpenSearch","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"IBM Cognos TM1","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Marquez","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"Nexla","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"Vertica","native":true},{"name":"Microsoft SQL Server","native":true},{"name":"Influx DB","native":true},{"name":"Cloudant","native":true},{"name":"OpenFaaS","native":true}]` | `[{"name":"dbt"},{"name":"Snowflake"},{"name":"Spark"},{"name":"Databricks"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"AWS"},{"name":"Airbyte"},{"name":"Tableau"},{"name":"Soda"},{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams"},{"name":"PagerDuty"},{"name":"Datadog"},{"name":"Python"},{"name":"dbt Cloud","native":true,"category":"transformation","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"Fivetran","native":true,"category":"ingestion","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"AWS S3","category":"storage","direction":"bidirectional"},{"name":"AWS Redshift","category":"data_warehouse"},{"name":"AWS EMR","category":"compute"},{"name":"AWS Glue","category":"transformation"},{"name":"AWS Athena","category":"analytics"},{"name":"AWS CloudWatch","category":"monitoring","direction":"outbound"},{"name":"Salesforce","category":"crm","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Looker","category":"analytics"},{"name":"Power BI","category":"analytics"},{"name":"Sigma","category":"analytics"},{"name":"Clickhouse","category":"storage"},{"name":"Ray","category":"compute"},{"name":"lakeFS","category":"data_management"},{"name":"OpenMetadata","category":"metadata"},{"name":"Cube","category":"semantic_layer"},{"name":"SFTP","category":"file_transfer"},{"name":"Microsoft SharePoint","category":"collaboration"},{"name":"Slurm","category":"compute"},{"name":"AWS Secrets Manager","category":"security"},{"name":"AWS SSM Parameter Store","category":"configuration"},{"name":"AWS ECR","category":"container_registry"},{"name":"Airflow","native":true,"category":"orchestration","direction":"inbound"},{"name":"Singer","native":true,"category":"ingestion","direction":"inbound"}]` |
| language.primary | Python | Python |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":["US"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://airflow.apache.org","retrievedAt":"2026-09-07T13:08:28.227Z"}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Solo","summary":"$10/month + $0.04/credit + $0.01/minute serverless compute","features":["Core and asset-based orchestration","Local development (dg CLI)","Partitions and backfills","Branch deployments","Asset checks","dbt integration","Asset lineage","Email and Slack alerts"],"minSeats":1,"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":10,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"credit"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.04,"currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"minute"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.01,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Personal projects and simple pipelines","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"users":"1","deployments":"1","code_locations":"1"}},{"free":false,"name":"Starter","summary":"$100/month + $0.035/credit","features":["All Solo features","Workflow-based orchestration","Freshness policies","Data column lineage","BI tool integration","Cost tracking for BigQuery and Snowflake","Catalog search","SAML SSO","Granular RBAC","PagerDuty and Datadog integration"],"minSeats":1,"commitment":"monthly","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":100,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"credit"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.035,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Small teams running production pipelines","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"users":"up to 3","code_locations":"5"}},{"free":false,"name":"Pro","summary":"Custom pricing; contact sales","features":["All Starter features","Custom serverless compute","Cost tracking and insights","Personalized onboarding support","Private Slack channel","Uptime SLAs","Custom security questionnaires","AI proactive monitoring","SCIM provisioning (Okta, Entra ID)","Audit logs","Hybrid deployments (Kubernetes, ECS, Docker, Azure)","EU data residency","SIEM log export"],"description":"Building and scaling an enterprise data platform","contactSales":true,"includedLimits":{"deployments":"Unlimited","code_locations":"Unlimited"}}],"summary":"From $10/month. Free 30-day trial. Subscription plus metered usage model.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://dagster.io/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-10-13T15:14:18.877Z","freeTrialDays":30,"startingPrice":{"amount":10,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | free | low |
| pricing.starting_price | - | `{"amount":10,"currency":"USD"}` |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 14 | 7 |
| release.history | 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| `[{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.26","date":"2026-10-09T23:08:50Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.26"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.25","date":"2026-10-01T18:17:43Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.25"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.24","date":"2026-09-21T23:53:17Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.24"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.23","date":"2026-09-16T21:25:17Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.23"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.22","date":"2026-09-11T16:59:11Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.22"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.21","date":"2026-09-03T20:03:16Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.21"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.20","date":"2026-08-27T16:50:54Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.20"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.19","date":"2026-08-21T15:53:20Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.19"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.18","date":"2026-08-14T19:59:51Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.18"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.17","date":"2026-08-07T19:12:58Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.17"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.16","date":"2026-07-30T17:24:09Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.16"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.15","date":"2026-07-23T15:59:52Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.15"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.14","date":"2026-07-16T18:39:10Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.14"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.13","date":"2026-07-09T17:39:15Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.12","date":"2026-07-02T16:27:40Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.11","date":"2026-06-25T18:23:24Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.11"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.10","date":"2026-06-18T19:23:58Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.10"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.9","date":"2026-06-11T19:16:52Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.8","date":"2026-06-04T18:11:04Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster/releases/tag/1.13.7","date":"2026-05-28T17:18:25Z","type":"stable","version":"1.13.7"}]` |
| security.certifications | - | `[{"name":"SOC 2 Type II","level":"Type II","status":"active"}]` |
| security.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.hipaa | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 7.3 | 5.1 |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |
| security.trust_center | - | https://dagster.io/security |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":1,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=apache-airflow-providers-common-sql&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":"HIGH"}` | `{"count":3,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=dagster&per_page=100","last_12m":1,"max_severity":"HIGH"}` |

## Capabilities (Data Engineering Tools)

| Capability | Apache Airflow | Dagster |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| Tool role | Orchestrator | Orchestrator |
| Processing paradigm | Batch | Batch |
| **Connectivity** |  |  |
| Connector count | 100+ | 28+ |
| CDC / log-based replication | - | ✗ |
| **Transformation** |  |  |
| In-warehouse transformation (push-down) | - | ✗ |
| dbt-native orchestration | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Self-hosted / open-source available | ✓ | ✓ |
| Managed cloud available | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Governance** |  |  |
| Data lineage / asset catalog | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Authoring** |  |  |
| Python-first authoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Execution** |  |  |
| Incremental / partition-aware runs | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Quality** |  |  |
| Built-in data quality / tests | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Scale** |  |  |
| Horizontal scale (distributed executor) | ✓ | ✓ |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-15T21:23:58.321Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*