Apache Airflow
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 12 workflow engines by recommenders
Widely used open-source engine for scheduled ETL pipelines, valued for Python workflows and its UI; critics say it fits recurring jobs better than durable or database-aware workflows.
Widely used open-source engine for scheduled ETL pipelines, valued for Python workflows and its UI; critics say it fits recurring jobs better than durable or database-aware workflows.
23 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Widely used across industry
“Airflow is one of the most widely used technologies out there”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “GitHub's Fake Star Economy” “used by me and many machine learning folks”
Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “GitHub's Fake Star Economy” Preferred over other orchestrators
“I like Airflow the best, but it's closer to Argo Workflows in terms of more long-lived workflows.”
Comment from 29 Nov 2025 in “A first look at Django's new background tasks” “Honestly I liked the airflow version the best, python is just better than bash”
Comment from 27 Feb 2026 in “Cronboard: A terminal-based dashboard for managing cron jobs” Enforced DAG structure for workflows
“they force workflows into DAGs, which is an enforceable structural constraint”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Postgres transactions are a distributed systems superpower” “solved by the DAG schedulers like Apache Airflow for a while now”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “pg_durable: Microsoft open sources in-database durable execution”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Lacks durable, database-aware workflows
“AirFlow doesn't even have the capability to do that in the first place”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “SQLite is all you need for durable workflows” “Airflow tasks, and durable workflows as a whole on top of a database”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Thoughts on Typing – Guido Van Rossum (PyCon 2026) [video]” Some users moved to other tools
“it feels much better than previous orchestrators I used like Prefect or Airflow”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “SQLite is all you need for durable workflows” “I am currently ditching both airflow and dbt.”
Comment from 18 Jan 2026 in “Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster (2014)”
Other workflow engines people recommend
The four most recommended other workflow engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 12 workflow engines, rankedWhat people said
20 of the 24 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“without the nice ui given by these tools”
“Pick the right runtime for getting the value from tools like these.”
“Airflow tasks, and durable workflows as a whole on top of a database”
“they force workflows into DAGs, which is an enforceable structural constraint”
“Airflow perhaps fits better with scheduled recurring ETL workflows.”
“they literally could have just stuck a nice frontend on top of it and written a backend data transfer library”
“If you are writing a workflow, use a workflow engine (Airflow, Temporal, etc)”
“Airflow (or anything external, for that matter) has no insight into DB load”
“solved by the DAG schedulers like Apache Airflow for a while now”
“AirFlow doesn't even have the capability to do that in the first place”
“it feels much better than previous orchestrators I used like Prefect or Airflow”
“Check out Airflow and Dagster.”
“Airflow is one of the most widely used technologies out there”
“used by me and many machine learning folks”
“Honestly I liked the airflow version the best, python is just better than bash”
“I am currently ditching both airflow and dbt.”
“Airflow and dbt serve a real purpose.”
“if it's something that can easily be done in bash or python you can do it within the worker as long as you're willing to throw a minimal amount of hardware at it”
“applied to datasets that often fit entirely in RAM”
“I like Airflow the best, but it's closer to Argo Workflows in terms of more long-lived workflows.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.