head to head · open source
airflow vs flink-cdc
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars, 18,000 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. flink-cdc has 6,482 stars, 2,199 forks, 119 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. airflow leads on adoption by 627% (47,147 vs 6,482 stars). airflow is written in Python under Apache-2.0; flink-cdc is written in Java under Apache-2.0. airflow has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, flink-cdc 34%. 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-integration, elt, etl), 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 | flink-cdc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 flink-cdc if
- You want the flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc
Flink CDC is an Apache 2.0 streaming data integration tool built on Apache Flink that moves real time and batch data between databases and downstream systems, and it is aimed at data engineers and platform teams who need change data capture pipelines without writing per source job code.
read the full flink-cdc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is airflow or flink-cdc more popular?
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars and flink-cdc has 6,482. airflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are airflow and flink-cdc free?
Both are open source. airflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and flink-cdc under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between airflow and flink-cdc?
airflow is written in Python and flink-cdc 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 flink-cdc?
Choose airflow if you want the larger community (47,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose flink-cdc if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.