head to head · open source
airflow vs CloudQuery
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars, 18,000 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. CloudQuery has 6,542 stars, 564 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped yesterday. airflow leads on adoption by 621% (47,147 vs 6,542 stars). airflow is written in Python under Apache-2.0; CloudQuery is written in Go under MPL-2.0. airflow has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, CloudQuery 9%. airflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (data-engineering, data-integration, elt), 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 | CloudQuery | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 564 |
| 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 CloudQuery if
- You want the CloudQuery feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and CloudQuery fits your workflow better
About airflow
Apache Airflow is an open source Python platform for programmatically authoring, scheduling, and monitoring data workflows, aimed at data engineers, data scientists, and MLOps teams who need to orchestrate pipelines as code.
read the full airflow overview →
About CloudQuery
CloudQuery is an open source, Go based cloud asset inventory and ELT tool, licensed under MPL 2.0, that syncs metadata from AWS, Azure, GCP, and more than 70 cloud and SaaS sources into a data warehouse so platform, security, and FinOps teams can query it with SQL.
read the full CloudQuery overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is airflow or CloudQuery more popular?
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars and CloudQuery has 6,542. airflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are airflow and CloudQuery free?
Both are open source. airflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and CloudQuery under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between airflow and CloudQuery?
airflow is written in Python and CloudQuery in Go. 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 CloudQuery?
Choose airflow if you want the larger community (47,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose CloudQuery if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.