Argo Workflows

What hackers pick instead

• TemporalRecommended for reliable long-running workflows with built-in retries, persisted state and crash recovery; critics call it overkill for small tasks, heavy to self-host and pricey on Cloud.138recommend
• DBOSRecommended for durable workflows and queues on Postgres, with far less complexity than Temporal. Common caveat: scaling and executor elasticity sit behind a paid tier.39recommend
• Apache AirflowWidely 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.18recommend
• RestatePeople recommend it for durable workflows and agents, with recovery, retries and state built in. Main caveat: critics question its availability and single point of failure.16recommend
• WindmillPeople recommend Windmill as a dependable workflow engine that integrates well with Python, Postgres and DuckDB. The most common caveat is its licensing.11recommend

Every quote

The 11 most detailed of 12 comments. Each links to the original.

1. it is so much more complex to setup and then build workflows for

   Criticizes · Nov 2025 · in “Building a CI/CD Pipeline Runner from Scratch in Python”

2. deploying argo workflows with helm, such fun!

   Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Pricing Changes for GitHub Actions”

3. You lose a lot startup speed though, so it's not a drop-in replacement and is only a good choice for long-running workflows.

   Mixed · Nov 2025 · in “A first look at Django's new background tasks”

4. It does distribute ELT pipelines rather well but I am not sure it was designed with that particular usecase in mind.

   Mixed · Apr 2026 · in “What if Python was natively distributable?”

5. I prefer the code work without having to think about queues as much as possible. In my case that was Argo workflows

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Oban, the job processing framework from Elixir, has come to Python”

6. systems like Argo workflows/events did an awesome job of keeping the message agnostic to anything

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “What if Python was natively distributable?”

7. We've started writing some new workflows against argo-workflows for the last like 9months or so.

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “GitHub Is Experiencing Difficulties”

8. You could do the same even with a single node cluster.

   Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Ask HN: Looking for a CI/CD project for my local lab”

9. Argo if you are in K8S, something else if you aren't.

   Recommends · Nov 2025 · in “A first look at Django's new background tasks”

10. Argo Workflows is a top choice for self hosted.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Ask HN: Alternatives to GH Actions?”

11. Argo Workflows DAGs (and UI generally) sucks real bad.

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Show HN: DAG-map – metro map visualization of a DAG”