Dagster vs Google Cloud Workflows
Dagster
dagster.io
Google Cloud Workflows
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | Dagster | Google Cloud Workflows |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $10/mo | $0.01/mo |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 6 | 6 |
| Spec score · Workflow Orchestration Software | 8.3 (#13) | 8.8 (#7) |
| Encryption | Dagster says inbound requests to Dagster+ require HTTPS and persistent data in its Postgres database, Redis message queue, and S3 buckets is encrypted at rest. | Customer-managed Cloud KMS keys can encrypt workflow definitions and execution data at rest. |
| Integrations | The official integration directory lists tools including Airbyte, Anthropic, Apache Airflow, AWS services, and Azure Data Lake Storage. | Connectors integrate workflows with Google Cloud APIs and handle request formatting, retries, and long-running operations; examples include Pub/Sub, Firestore, and Secret Manager. |
| Support | The plan comparison lists community and Support Center and Ask AI support, while Pro includes personalized onboarding support and a private Slack channel. | Google Cloud customers, including free trial customers, receive Basic Support with documentation, community forums, billing assistance, and Active Assist. |
| What it does | Dagster describes itself as a data-aware orchestrator for building, running, and monitoring data pipelines and assets. | Google Cloud Workflows orchestrates Google Cloud services, custom Cloud Run services or functions, and HTTP APIs into serverless applications and pipelines without infrastructure management. |
Plans
Dagster
- Solo$10 a month
- Starter$100 a month
- ProPriced on request
- Solo Plan$10 a month
- Starter Plan$100 a month
- Pro PlanPriced on request
Google Cloud Workflows
- Always FreeFree
- Always Free external stepsFree
- Always Free internal stepsFree
- Internal steps$0.01 a month
- Pay as you go$0.01 a month
- External steps$0.03 a month
In their own words
Dagster
Dagster is a data-aware orchestrator for building, running and monitoring data pipelines and assets. It models assets and dependencies to show lineage across a data platform, while supporting partitions, incremental runs, declarative workflows and fault-tolerant orchestration. An integrated catalog combines data discovery, lineage, workflows and operational metadata. Quality features include code-embedded validation, automated testing, freshness checks and observability tools. The integration directory lists Airbyte, Anthropic, Apache Airflow, AWS services and Azure Data Lake Storage. Dagster+ hybrid deployment keeps compute in a customer’s infrastructure while Dagster manages the control plane. The core framework is open source on GitHub. Platforms listed are API, Linux, self-hosted and web; deployment is hybrid. A 30-day trial is listed. Solo costs $10 a month plus usage charges, and Starter costs $100 a month plus usage charges. Dagster’s website says it is now part of Prefect.
Google Cloud Workflows
Google Cloud Workflows is a managed orchestration platform for running Google Cloud services, custom services, and HTTP APIs in a chosen sequence. Workflow definitions use YAML or JSON and can combine ordered steps with conditions, loops, parallel work, and reusable subworkflows. Start an execution manually, through client libraries or REST, or on a schedule with Cloud Scheduler. Connectors link workflows to Google Cloud APIs such as Pub/Sub, Firestore, and Secret Manager, while workflow steps can also call custom or private HTTP and HTTPS endpoints. Reliability features include retries, polling, error handling, callbacks, and waits of up to one year. A single execution can run up to 100,000 steps and last no more than one year. IAM controls access; Secret Manager can store and retrieve secrets. Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring surface execution logs, volume, errors, and duration. Pricing is based on executed steps, including failed and retried steps, while idle workflows incur no charges. The free plan includes 5,000 internal and 2,000 external steps; paid usage starts at $0.01 per month, with rates that vary by step type and volume.