Apache Airflow vs Kestra
Both are self-hosted automation projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.
| Apache Airflow | Kestra | |
|---|---|---|
| Health score | 96/100 | 96/100 |
| Commits (11 mo) | 7515 | 4239 |
| Commits (last 3 mo) | 2131 | 1452 |
| Stars | 47k | 28k |
| Latest release | 17 Sept 2026 | 22 Sept 2026 |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Built with | Python, Docker | Docker |
| Typical RAM | 2 GB | 2 GB |
Apache Airflow
Platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows.
High commit volume, frequent releases and growing activity.
Commit activity more than 98% of tracked projects; popularity more than 96%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
Kestra
Event-driven, language-agnostic platform to create, schedule, and monitor workflows. In code. Coordinate data pipelines and tasks such as ETL and ELT.
High commit volume, frequent releases and growing activity.
Commit activity more than 96% of tracked projects; popularity more than 91%. How this is calculated.
Commits, last 11 months
How to read this
Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.
What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.
See every option in this category: self-hosted automation.