Apache Airflow vs Prefect

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.

Prefect is a workflow orchestration platform for data, machine learning and agent workflows written in Python. Its open-source framework lets users add decorators to existing Python code to create workflows, without a rigid DAG structure or custom DSL. Execution features include state tracking, automatic retries, caching and recovery from failures. For observability, Prefect provides run timelines, logs and alerts for failures, missed SLAs and late runs. Workflows can run on cron or event-driven schedules, support backfills, and be triggered by webhooks, cloud events or state changes. Deployment choices include managed serverless execution, hybrid execution in a customer’s infrastructure, and self-hosted orchestration. In hybrid mode, workers connect through outbound-only connections while code and data stay in the customer’s infrastructure; Prefect Cloud hosts the control plane and metadata. The free Hobby plan is limited to two users, five deployments, 500 minutes of monthly serverless credits and seven days of run retention. Paid plans start at $100/mo.