Kestra vs Prefect
On the evidence we track, Prefect leads this comparison with a composite score of 70/100. Scores are only directly comparable because these tools share a category; the full breakdown and every source is below.
Capabilities
Feature-by-feature on the axes that matter for data engineering tools. “-” means undocumented, not absent.
What each one is
The product in its own terms, so the numbers below have context.
Kestra
A language-agnostic platform that lets teams define and run business-critical workflows declaratively as code, with built-in scheduling, event-driven triggers, retries, failure handling, and full observability across cloud, on-premise, and air-gapped deployments.
Prefect
LeaderA Python-native workflow automation platform that handles scheduling, retries, caching, and recovery for data pipelines and AI agent workflows, with both cloud-managed and self-hosted execution options.
Pricing
List pricing as published by each vendor, with the date we read it. Always verify at the source before you buy.
Kestra
- Open SourceFree
- Kestra CloudManaged cloud with enterprise support
- Fully Managed Platform (Hosting, Upgrades, Monitoring)
- Built-in Security and Governance Features
- Customer Success Program & Enterprise Support with SLA
- Audit Logs
- Kestra EnterpriseContact sales
- Run anywhere Cloud, On-Prem, Air-Gapped
- RBAC, audit logs, secrets management, asset lineage
- AI Copilot (Any LLM Cloud or Self-Hosted)
- Human-in-the-Loop Approvals
Prefect
LeaderFree Hobby tier. Starter from $100/month. Team per-user monthly pricing. Enterprise custom quote.
- HobbyFree
- Workflow scheduling
- Up to 5 deployments
- 500 minutes of Prefect Serverless
- Workflow observability
- Logging & alerting
- +1 more
- Starter$100/mo
- All Hobby features
- Up to 20 deployments
- 75 hours of Prefect Serverless
- Bring your own compute
- Webhooks
- +1 more
- Team-
- All Starter features
- Up to 100 deployments
- 225 hours of Prefect Serverless
- Service accounts
- 24 hour audit log
- EnterpriseContact sales
- All Team features
- SSO (SAML/OIDC)
- RBAC + ACLs
- Multiple workspaces
- Directory Sync (SCIM)
- +2 more
Platform & deployment
Where each product runs and how it can be hosted. A dash means undocumented, not unsupported.
Integrations
What each product connects to. Counts come from the vendor's own integration directory where one exists.
- dbt
- GitHub
- Kubernetes
- Docker
- Slack
- OpenAI
- AWS Secrets Manager
- HashiCorp Vault
- AWS
Kestra
- Ansible
- Spark
- Airbyte
- Dremio
- Arrow Flight SQL
- Git
- GitHub Actions
- Terraform
- S3
- Azure Data Lake Storage
- Postgres
- JDBC databases
- HTTP APIs
- Polars
- Python
- Bash
- Node.js
- Go
- Apache Kafka
- Apache Spark
- PagerDuty
- PostgreSQL
- Anthropic
- Google Gemini
- +25 more
Prefect
Leader- Pydantic AI
- Snowflake
- Redis
- Amazon ECS
- Google Cloud Run
Kestra or Prefect: which one depends on you
A composite score cannot know your constraints. Describe them and both get re-weighted against what you actually need, with the evidence behind every position.
Free to run, no account needed to start. How the evaluation works
Comparison generated from independently-sourced facts. Every value links to its source and retrieval date. See the method.