head to head · open source
airflow vs fluvio
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars, 18,000 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fluvio has 5,257 stars, 531 forks, 139 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. airflow leads on adoption by 797% (47,147 vs 5,257 stars). airflow is written in Python under Apache-2.0; fluvio is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. airflow has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, fluvio 10%. airflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (data-integration, data-pipelines), 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 | fluvio | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-08-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 531 |
| 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 fluvio if
- You want the fluvio feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and fluvio 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 fluvio
Fluvio is a distributed data streaming engine written in Rust, distributed under the Apache 2.0 license and developed in the fluvio community repository. It is described as composable, declarative and stateful: a streaming runtime that pairs with Stateful DataFlow, a distributed stream processing framework, so that a single system covers both the transport of event streams and the transformation of that data while it is in motion. The project sits in the Rust and cloud native ecosystem and is published on crates.io, with documentation hosted at fluvio.io.
read the full fluvio overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is airflow or fluvio more popular?
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars and fluvio has 5,257. airflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are airflow and fluvio free?
Both are open source. airflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and fluvio under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between airflow and fluvio?
airflow is written in Python and fluvio in Rust. 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 fluvio?
Choose airflow if you want the larger community (47,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose fluvio if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.