# Apache Airflow vs Meltano

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Apache Airflow

| Attribute | Apache Airflow | Meltano |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 69 (66% (medium)) | 63.4 (36% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | 91 |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 189 | 42 |
| adoption.github_stars | 47,054 | 2,657 |
| adoption.package_downloads_weekly | 1,607,065 | - |
| 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":"Meltano provides a code-first approach to data integration, offering 600+ pre-built connectors with compute-time pricing and integrated governance. It enables teams to combine data extraction, loading, and transformation workflows with native dbt support and orchestration capabilities. It is indexed under Data Engineering Tools.","source":"https://meltano.com/pricingcalculator","question":"What is Meltano?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Meltano offers a free tier, so you can start without paying. Paid plans are also available: Starter, Growth, Scale and Enterprise. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://meltano.com","question":"Is Meltano free?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Meltano 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://meltano.com/pricingcalculator","question":"What platforms does Meltano support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Meltano can be deployed cloud / SaaS and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://meltano.com/pricingcalculator","question":"Can Meltano be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 8 integrations for Meltano, including Singer, dbt, Airflow, PostgreSQL, Snowflake, Great Expectations, Dagster and Superset. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://meltano.com/pricingcalculator","question":"What does Meltano integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed GDPR for Meltano. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Meltano not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://meltano.com/privacy-policy","question":"What security certifications does Meltano have?","confidence":0.7},{"answer":"Yes. Meltano is published under the MIT 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/meltano/meltano","question":"Is Meltano open source?","confidence":0.95}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":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. | Meltano provides teams with an open-source data integration engine that orchestrates extraction, loading, and transformation from multiple sources. It supports various replication methods and includes automatic data quality monitoring, with flexibility to deploy either in a managed cloud environment or as self-hosted infrastructure. |
| 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":true,"role":"elt","paradigm":"both","dbt_native":true,"data_quality":true,"elt_pushdown":true,"managed_cloud":true,"connector_count":"600+","self_hosted_oss":true,"incremental_runs":true,"streaming_ingestion":true,"custom_connector_sdk":true,"schema_drift_handling":true,"self_hosted_available":true,"managed_cloud_available":true}` |
| integrations.count | 54 | 600 |
| 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":"Singer"},{"name":"dbt"},{"name":"Airflow"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"Snowflake"},{"name":"Great Expectations"},{"name":"Dagster"},{"name":"Superset"},{"name":"Slack","native":true},{"name":"Salesforce","native":true},{"name":"Google Analytics","native":true},{"name":"BigQuery","native":true},{"name":"dbt Cloud","native":true},{"name":"HubSpot","native":true},{"name":"Zendesk","native":true},{"name":"Jira","native":true},{"name":"Google Sheets","native":true},{"name":"Amazon Redshift","native":true},{"name":"MySQL","native":true},{"name":"GitHub","native":true},{"name":"GitLab","native":true},{"name":"Freshdesk","native":true},{"name":"Intercom","native":true},{"name":"Apache Kafka","native":true},{"name":"AWS S3","native":true},{"name":"Looker","native":true},{"name":"Data.world","native":true},{"name":"Monday.com","native":true},{"name":"Asana","native":true},{"name":"Mailchimp","native":true},{"name":"LinkedIn Ads","native":true},{"name":"Airtable","native":true},{"name":"ActiveCampaign","native":true},{"name":"Marketo","native":true},{"name":"Microsoft SQL Server","native":true},{"name":"MongoDB","native":true},{"name":"Oracle","native":true},{"name":"Google Cloud Storage","native":true},{"name":"Amazon Advertising"},{"name":"Amazon S3"},{"name":"Auth0"},{"name":"BigCommerce"},{"name":"Chargebee"},{"name":"ClickHouse"},{"name":"Clickup"},{"name":"Close"},{"name":"Confluence"},{"name":"Contentful"},{"name":"Databricks"},{"name":"Datadog"},{"name":"DuckDB"},{"name":"eBay"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"Eventbrite"},{"name":"Facebook Ads"},{"name":"FreshBooks"},{"name":"Google Ads"},{"name":"Greenhouse"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"Klaviyo"},{"name":"NetSuite"},{"name":"Postgres"},{"name":"Sumo Logic"}]` |
| language.primary | Python | Python |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"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":"Starter","features":["200 compute hours/mo","Managed infrastructure","25 workspaces","Unlimited users","600+ connectors","Reverse ETL included","AI Data engineer agent","Direct access to Meltano Engineers via Slack","Enterprise security","Best in class SLA"],"commitment":"monthly","description":"Get your first managed pipelines running in hours, not weeks","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"users":"unlimited","connectors":"600+","workspaces":"25","compute_hours":"200/mo"}},{"free":false,"name":"Growth","features":["2000 compute hours/mo","Everything in Starter","100 workspaces","8 hours of engineering on demand/mo","Shared account management"],"commitment":"monthly","description":"Scale pipelines with real engineering support baked in","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"connectors":"600+","workspaces":"100","compute_hours":"2000/mo"}},{"free":false,"name":"Scale","features":["5000 compute hours/mo","Everything in Growth","Unlimited workspaces","15 hours of engineering on demand/mo","Dedicated account management","Cost monitoring workspace included"],"commitment":"monthly","description":"Dedicated support. Full platform access. Nothing held back.","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"connectors":"600+","workspaces":"unlimited","compute_hours":"5000/mo"}},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","features":["Unlimited compute hours/mo","Everything in Scale","Custom connectors","Custom hours of engineering on demand/mo","Custom SLA"],"commitment":"monthly","description":"Truly custom. For organisations with serious data at scale.","contactSales":true,"includedLimits":{"connectors":"600+","compute_hours":"unlimited"}}],"summary":"Free open-source version. Managed cloud plans from Starter (200 compute hrs/mo) to Enterprise (unlimited). Pay for compute, not rows.","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://meltano.com","retrievedAt":"2026-08-03T14:26:46.478Z","billingPeriods":["month"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | free | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 14 | 7 |
| release.history | 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| `[{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.4.1","date":"2026-10-07T10:57:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.4.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.4.0","date":"2026-09-29T13:20:16Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.4.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.3.0","date":"2026-09-21T16:03:58Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.2.2","date":"2026-07-22T15:52:24Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v3.9.5","date":"2026-07-22T15:23:55Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.2.1","date":"2026-06-16T22:28:01Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v3.9.4","date":"2026-06-16T22:27:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v3.9.3","date":"2026-04-13T20:41:28Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.2.0","date":"2026-04-10T23:16:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.1.2","date":"2026-02-03T03:20:00Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.1.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v3.9.2","date":"2026-02-03T13:39:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.9.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.1.1","date":"2026-01-31T18:19:50Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.1.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.1.0","date":"2026-01-30T23:39:39Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.0.9","date":"2026-01-19T19:14:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.0.8","date":"2025-12-17T19:50:30Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.0.7","date":"2025-12-09T02:51:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.0.6","date":"2025-11-20T00:02:42Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.0.5","date":"2025-11-04T15:26:22Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.0.4","date":"2025-10-31T17:09:54Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/meltano/meltano/releases/tag/v4.0.3","date":"2025-10-30T22:13:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v4.0.3"}]` |
| security.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 7.3 | - |
| security.trust_center | - | https://meltano.com/privacy-policy |
| 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":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=pypi&package_name=meltano&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

## Capabilities (Data Engineering Tools)

| Capability | Apache Airflow | Meltano |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Core** |  |  |
| Tool role | Orchestrator | ELT / ingestion |
| Processing paradigm | Batch | Batch + streaming |
| **Connectivity** |  |  |
| Connector count | 100+ | 600+ |
| 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 2026-10-16T19:18:04.464Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*