head to head · open source
airflow vs chunjun
airflow has 47,350 GitHub stars, 18,299 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chunjun has 4,106 stars, 1,683 forks, 287 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. airflow leads on adoption by 1,053% (47,350 vs 4,106 stars). airflow is written in Python under Apache-2.0; chunjun is written in Java under Apache-2.0. airflow has attracted 39% as many forks as stars, chunjun 41%. airflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (data-integration), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| airflow | chunjun | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick airflow if
- You weight community size — 47K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick chunjun if
- You want the chunjun feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and chunjun fits your workflow better
About airflow
Apache Airflow Apache Airflow (or simply Airflow) is a platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows. When workflows are defined as code, they become more maintainable, versionable, testable, and collaborative. Use Airflow to author workflows (Dags) that orchestrate tasks. The Airflow scheduler executes your tasks on an array of workers while following the specified dependencies. Rich command line utilities make performing complex surgeries on Dags a snap. The rich user interface makes it easy to visualize pipelines running in production, monitor progress, and troubleshoot issues when…
read the full airflow overview →
About chunjun
ChunJun Introduce ChunJun is a distributed integration framework, and currently is based on Apache Flink. It was initially known as FlinkX and renamed ChunJun on February 22, 2022. It can realize data synchronization and calculation between various heterogeneous data sources. ChunJun has been deployed and running stably in thousands of companies so far. Official website of ChunJun: Features of ChunJun ChunJun abstracts different databases into reader/source plugins, writer/sink plugins and lookup plugins, and it has the following features: Based on the real time computing engine Flink, and supports JSON template…
read the full chunjun overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is airflow or chunjun more popular?
airflow has 47,350 GitHub stars and chunjun has 4,106. airflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are airflow and chunjun free?
Both are open source. airflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and chunjun under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between airflow and chunjun?
airflow is written in Python and chunjun in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, airflow or chunjun?
Choose airflow if you want the larger community (47,350 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose chunjun if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.