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AWS Step Functions VS Apache Airflow

Compare AWS Step Functions VS Apache Airflow and see what are their differences

AWS Step Functions logo AWS Step Functions

AWS Step Functions makes it easy to coordinate the components of distributed applications and microservices using visual workflows.

Apache Airflow logo Apache Airflow

Airflow is a platform to programmaticaly author, schedule and monitor data pipelines.
  • AWS Step Functions Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-29
  • Apache Airflow Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-17

AWS Step Functions videos

Orchestrating Distributed Business Workflows with AWS Step Functions - AWS Online Tech Talks

More videos:

  • Review - AWS Step Functions: Parallelism and concurrency in Step Functions and AWS Lambda
  • Review - AWS Step Functions: Workflows for development and testing

Apache Airflow videos

Airflow Tutorial for Beginners - Full Course in 2 Hours 2022

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to AWS Step Functions and Apache Airflow)
Workflow Automation
15 15%
85% 85
Project Management
100 100%
0% 0
Automation
12 12%
88% 88
Web Service Automation
16 16%
84% 84

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare AWS Step Functions and Apache Airflow

AWS Step Functions Reviews

Top 8 Apache Airflow Alternatives in 2024
This service suits for many use cases, such as building ETL pipelines, orchestrating microservices, and managing high workloads. AWS Step Functions is particularly efficient when combined with other AWS solutions: Lambda for computing, Dynamo DB for storage, Athena for Analytics, SageMaker for machine learning, etc.
Source: blog.skyvia.com
10 Best Airflow Alternatives for 2024
AWS Step Functions enable the incorporation of AWS services such as Lambda, Fargate, SNS, SQS, SageMaker, and EMR into business processes, Data Pipelines, and applications. Users and enterprises can choose between 2 types of workflows: Standard (for long-running workloads) and Express (for high-volume event processing workloads), depending on their use case.
Source: hevodata.com

Apache Airflow Reviews

5 Airflow Alternatives for Data Orchestration
While Apache Airflow continues to be a popular tool for data orchestration, the alternatives presented here offer a range of features and benefits that may better suit certain projects or team preferences. Whether you prioritize simplicity, code-centric design, or the integration of machine learning workflows, there is likely an alternative that meets your needs. By...
Top 8 Apache Airflow Alternatives in 2024
Apache Airflow is a workflow streamlining solution aiming at accelerating routine procedures. This article provides a detailed description of Apache Airflow as one of the most popular automation solutions. It also presents and compares alternatives to Airflow, their characteristic features, and recommended application areas. Based on that, each business could decide which...
Source: blog.skyvia.com
10 Best Airflow Alternatives for 2024
In a nutshell, you gained a basic understanding of Apache Airflow and its powerful features. On the other hand, you understood some of the limitations and disadvantages of Apache Airflow. Hence, this article helped you explore the best Apache Airflow Alternatives available in the market. So, you can try hands-on on these Airflow Alternatives and select the best according to...
Source: hevodata.com
A List of The 16 Best ETL Tools And Why To Choose Them
Apache Airflow is an open-source platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows. The platform features a web-based user interface and a command-line interface for managing and triggering workflows.
15 Best ETL Tools in 2022 (A Complete Updated List)
Apache Airflow programmatically creates, schedules and monitors workflows. It can also modify the scheduler to run the jobs as and when required.

Social recommendations and mentions

Apache Airflow might be a bit more popular than AWS Step Functions. We know about 67 links to it since March 2021 and only 59 links to AWS Step Functions. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

AWS Step Functions mentions (59)

  • Making Serverless 15x Cheaper
    ‍ Conventional serverless platforms require an expensive external orchestrator like AWS Step Functions to coordinate these steps, executing each in sequence and retrying them when they fail. By contrast, DBOS Cloud uses the reliable workflows built into open-source DBOS Transact to guarantee transactional execution for an application at no additional cost. - Source: dev.to / 2 days ago
  • Event-Driven Architecture on AWS
    Event Routers: Services like Amazon SQS (A managed message queuing), Amazon SNS (A pub/sub messaging), AWS Step Functions (An orchestrate serverless workflows) and Amazon EventBridge (A serverless event bus) act as event routers, establishing the paths and flow for messages within the architecture. They enable seamless handling and distribution of events, ensuring that each message reaches its intended destination... - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Serverless Data Processor using AWS Lambda, Step Functions and Fargate on ECS (with Rust 🦀🦀)
    There are a few ways to solve this of course but one solution I wanted to explore is using AWS Step Functions (https://aws.amazon.com/step-functions/) to drive the whole process. Step Functions is a serverless workflow orchestration system. One part of it is support for a distributed map mode where you can run many parallel operations over a set of data. There are different approaches you can use to get the list... - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • The Energy Drink Episodes 3: The Step Function Awakens
    If you have ever spoken to me, read anything I've written or listened to any talks I’ve done in relation to Serverless or infrastructure as code, there is a high likelihood that I have confessed my love for Step Functions. Even when unprompted. Putting my biases aside, however, there are some legitimate reasons we can consider using them in our app. If you are new to Step Functions or just fancy a refresher, have... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Testing Serverless Applications on AWS
    For context; the web application is built with React and TypeScript which makes calls to an AppSync API that makes use of the Lambda and DynamoDB datasources. We use Step Functions to orchestrate the flow of events for complex processing like purchasing and renewing policies, and we use S3 and SQS to process document workloads. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
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Apache Airflow mentions (67)

  • 10 Open Source Tools for Building MLOps Pipelines
    An integral part of an ML project is data acquisition and data transformation into the required format. This involves creating ETL (extract, transform, load) pipelines and running them periodically. Airflow is an open source platform that helps engineers create and manage complex data pipelines. Furthermore, the support for Python programming language makes it easy for ML teams to adopt Airflow. - Source: dev.to / 8 days ago
  • AI Strategy Guide: How to Scale AI Across Your Business
    Level 1 of MLOps is when you've put each lifecycle stage and their intefaces in an automated pipeline. The pipeline could be a python or bash script, or it could be a directed acyclic graph run by some orchestration framework like Airflow, dagster or one of the cloud-provider offerings. AI- or data-specific platforms like MLflow, ClearML and dvc also feature pipeline capabilities. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • The 2024 Web Hosting Report
    For the third, examples here might be analytics plugins in specialized databases like Clickhouse, data-transformations in places like your ETL pipeline using Airflow or Fivetran, or special integrations in your authentication workflow with Auth0 hooks and rules. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Best ETL Tools And Why To Choose
    Apache Airflow is an open-source platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows. The platform features a web-based user interface and a command-line interface for managing and triggering workflows. Source: 7 months ago
  • Simplifying Data Transformation in Redshift: An Approach with DBT and Airflow
    Airflow is the most widely used and well-known tool for orchestrating data workflows. It allows for efficient pipeline construction, scheduling, and monitoring. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing AWS Step Functions and Apache Airflow, you can also consider the following products

Kestra.io - Infinitely scalable, event-driven, language-agnostic orchestration and scheduling platform to manage millions of workflows declaratively in code.

ifttt - IFTTT puts the internet to work for you. Create simple connections between the products you use every day.

Dagster - The cloud-native open source orchestrator for the whole development lifecycle, with integrated lineage and observability, a declarative programming model, and best-in-class testability.

Microsoft Power Automate - Microsoft Power Automate is an automation platform that integrates DPA, RPA, and process mining. It lets you automate your organization at scale using low-code and AI.

n8n.io - Free and open fair-code licensed node based Workflow Automation Tool. Easily automate tasks across different services.

Make.com - Tool for workflow automation (Former Integromat)