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Tool Comparison
VS
At a Glance
| Attribute | Apache Airflow | Dagster |
|---|---|---|
| License / Pricing | Open Source | Open Source |
| Type | data | data |
| GitHub Stars | — | — |
| Rating | 4.5/5 | 4.6/5 |
| Key Features | 6 listed | 6 listed |
| Integrations | 5 listed | 5 listed |
| Categories | Workflow Orchestration | Workflow Orchestration |
Key Features
Apache Airflow
- DAGs defined as Python code with rich scheduling expressions (cron, timetables)
- Rich UI for monitoring task execution, logs, and Gantt charts
- 250+ provider packages for AWS, GCP, Azure, Spark, dbt, and more
- Dynamic task mapping for parallel fan-out on variable-size inputs
- Managed Airflow via Amazon MWAA, Google Cloud Composer, and Astronomer
- XCom for passing data between tasks with flexible backend storage
Dagster
- Software-defined assets (SDA) for asset-centric pipeline modeling
- Asset lineage graph with freshness tracking and metadata
- Partitioned assets for incremental processing by date or key range
- Built-in sensor and schedule framework for event-driven pipelines
- Dagster Cloud for fully managed orchestration with branching deployments
- Integrations with dbt, Spark, Airbyte, Fivetran, Snowflake, and more
Real-World Use Cases
Apache Airflow
Orchestrate a dbt + Spark ETL pipeline
Define a DAG with SparkSubmitOperator to run a transformation job
ML training pipeline orchestration
Create tasks for data ingestion, feature engineering, model training
Dagster
Model data pipeline as software-defined assets
Define raw, staging, and transformed tables as @asset decorated functions
Integrate dbt models as Dagster assets
Install dagster-dbt and load the dbt project into Dagster
Integrations
Apache Airflow
apache-sparkdbtairbytesnowflakegreat-expectations
Dagster
dbtairbyteapache-sparksnowflakegreat-expectations
🏆 Which should you choose?
Choose Apache Airflow if…
- → you're already in the Workflow Orchestration ecosystem and prefer Apache Airflow's workflow
Choose Dagster if…
- → you're already in the Workflow Orchestration ecosystem and prefer Dagster's workflow