Apache Airflow vs Azkaban
Apache Airflow
airflow.apache.orgAzkaban
azkaban.github.ioSide by side
| Figure | Apache Airflow | Azkaban |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Workload Automation Software | 8.6 (#4) | 7.6 (#17) |
| Spec score · Workflow Orchestration Software | 8.6 (#8) | 7.7 (#26) |
| Authentication | Airflow uses JWT authentication for its public REST API and internal Execution API. | Azkaban ships with XMLUserManager, but its documentation says this default is not secure and recommends using a suitable user manager, such as LDAP, in production. |
| Purpose | Apache Airflow is a platform for programmatically authoring, scheduling, and monitoring workflows. | Azkaban is a distributed workflow manager created at LinkedIn to manage Hadoop job dependencies and run jobs in sequence. |
| Web interface | Its web application lets users monitor, schedule, and manage workflows and view task status and logs. | It provides a web UI to maintain and track workflows. |
Plans
In their own words
Apache Airflow
Apache Airflow is a platform for authoring, scheduling, and monitoring workflows written in Python. It is designed for batch workflows with a defined beginning and end that run on a schedule. Its web application lets users manage and schedule workflows, trigger DAGs manually, inspect task status and logs, backfill runs, and rerun failed tasks. A modular architecture uses a message queue to coordinate workers and can orchestrate an arbitrary number of them. Built-in operators connect workflows to Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and other services. The community maintains more than 80 separately installable provider packages, which can be upgraded or downgraded independently of Airflow core. Airflow can read connections, variables, and configuration from secret backends, but those integrations do not support writes. JWT authentication is used for its public REST API and internal Execution API. From Airflow 3 onward, sensitive credentials are masked in logs, the interface, and API output. Airflow is free to download and use under the Apache License.