# Apache Airflow vs Node-RED

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Apache Airflow

| Attribute | Apache Airflow | Node-RED |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 69 (66% (medium)) | 46 (12% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 100 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 189 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 47,054 | - |
| 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":"Node-RED is a low-code development environment for creating event-driven applications. It enables users to build flows that collect, transform, and visualize data, suitable for applications ranging from home automation to large-scale industrial systems. It is indexed under Workflow Automation Software.","source":"https://nodered.org","question":"What is Node-RED?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Node-RED supports the web and Android. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://nodered.org","question":"What platforms does Node-RED support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Node-RED can be deployed cloud / SaaS and self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://nodered.org","question":"Can Node-RED be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":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. | Node-RED enables users to create applications for processing and displaying streaming data through a visual, component-based interface. It supports a wide range of automation scenarios from personal projects to enterprise operations, accessible to users with varying technical backgrounds. |
| 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}` | - |
| integrations.count | 54 | 2 |
| 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":"Arduino"},{"name":"MQTT"}]` |
| language.primary | Python | - |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | - |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true,"mac":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true,"linux":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","sourceUrl":"https://airflow.apache.org","retrievedAt":"2026-09-07T13:08:28.227Z"}` | - |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | - |
| pricing.model | open_source | - |
| pricing.price_level | free | - |
| pricing.transparent | yes | - |
| release.cadence_days | 14 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.3.2","date":"2026-09-17T11:10:15Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.3.1","date":"2026-08-12T09:50:17Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/java-sdk/1.0.0-beta1","date":"2026-07-13T18:14:58Z","type":"prerelease","version":"java-sdk/1.0.0-beta1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.3.0","date":"2026-07-06T15:16:00Z","type":"stable","version":"3.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/helm-chart/1.22.0","date":"2026-06-13T23:37:21Z","type":"stable","version":"helm-chart/1.22.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/airflow-ctl/0.1.5","date":"2026-06-03T20:29:33Z","type":"stable","version":"airflow-ctl/0.1.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.2.2","date":"2026-05-29T06:27:24Z","type":"stable","version":"3.2.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/helm-chart/1.21.0","date":"2026-04-24T20:54:43Z","type":"stable","version":"helm-chart/1.21.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.2.1","date":"2026-04-22T09:27:57Z","type":"stable","version":"3.2.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.2.0","date":"2026-04-07T14:51:49Z","type":"stable","version":"3.2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/helm-chart/1.20.0","date":"2026-03-22T22:34:36Z","type":"stable","version":"helm-chart/1.20.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/airflow-ctl/0.1.3","date":"2026-03-19T10:35:06Z","type":"stable","version":"airflow-ctl/0.1.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.1.8","date":"2026-03-11T22:16:16Z","type":"stable","version":"3.1.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/airflow-ctl/0.1.2","date":"2026-02-25T21:45:45Z","type":"stable","version":"airflow-ctl/0.1.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/helm-chart/1.19.0","date":"2026-02-17T19:54:34Z","type":"stable","version":"helm-chart/1.19.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.1.7","date":"2026-02-04T12:20:25Z","type":"stable","version":"3.1.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.1.6","date":"2026-01-13T11:08:29Z","type":"stable","version":"3.1.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/airflow-ctl/0.1.1","date":"2026-01-13T21:57:27Z","type":"stable","version":"airflow-ctl/0.1.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.1.5","date":"2025-12-10T09:11:07Z","type":"stable","version":"3.1.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/apache/airflow/releases/tag/3.1.3","date":"2025-11-14T14:47:34Z","type":"stable","version":"3.1.3"}]` | `[{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.7","date":"2026-09-08T13:35:43Z","type":"stable","version":"5.0.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.6","date":"2026-09-01T22:31:51Z","type":"stable","version":"5.0.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.5","date":"2026-09-01T14:12:59Z","type":"stable","version":"5.0.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/4.1.14","date":"2026-09-01T12:55:23Z","type":"stable","version":"4.1.14"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.4","date":"2026-07-30T21:50:35Z","type":"stable","version":"5.0.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.3","date":"2026-07-30T21:34:41Z","type":"stable","version":"5.0.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.2","date":"2026-07-30T08:56:10Z","type":"stable","version":"5.0.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/4.1.13","date":"2026-07-30T21:57:28Z","type":"stable","version":"4.1.13"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/4.1.12","date":"2026-07-30T09:29:14Z","type":"stable","version":"4.1.12"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.1","date":"2026-07-01T14:51:32Z","type":"stable","version":"5.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.0","date":"2026-06-09T09:06:58Z","type":"stable","version":"5.0.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/4.1.11","date":"2026-06-04T09:52:07Z","type":"stable","version":"4.1.11"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/4.1.10","date":"2026-05-08T12:40:05Z","type":"stable","version":"4.1.10"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/4.1.9","date":"2026-05-06T10:14:39Z","type":"stable","version":"4.1.9"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.0-beta.6","date":"2026-04-30T15:48:16Z","type":"prerelease","version":"5.0.0-beta.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.0-beta.5","date":"2026-04-16T15:25:57Z","type":"prerelease","version":"5.0.0-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/4.1.8","date":"2026-03-24T11:35:37Z","type":"stable","version":"4.1.8"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.0-beta.4","date":"2026-03-17T13:02:30Z","type":"prerelease","version":"5.0.0-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/4.1.7","date":"2026-03-06T12:59:58Z","type":"stable","version":"4.1.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/node-red/node-red/releases/tag/5.0.0-beta.3","date":"2026-03-05T11:05:15Z","type":"prerelease","version":"5.0.0-beta.3"}]` |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 7.3 | - |
| 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=npm&package_name=%40node-red%2Fnodes&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-17T02:41:56.816Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*