head to head · open source
airflow vs realtime
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars, 18,000 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. realtime has 7,649 stars, 474 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. airflow leads on adoption by 516% (47,147 vs 7,649 stars). airflow is written in Python under Apache-2.0; realtime is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0. airflow has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, realtime 6%. airflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | realtime | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Elixir |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 474 |
| 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 realtime if
- You want the realtime feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You evaluated both and realtime 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 realtime
Supabase Realtime is a server built with Elixir on the Phoenix Framework that pushes three kinds of realtime functionality to browser and server clients over WebSockets. It lives in the Supabase ecosystem, where it acts as the realtime layer alongside Postgres, and it is distributed as open source under the Apache 2.0 license. The project has been public for roughly seven years, carries 7,632 stars and 463 forks, and its topic list places it in the company of change data capture, CRDT, distributed systems, pubsub, and PostgreSQL tooling.
read the full realtime overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is airflow or realtime more popular?
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars and realtime has 7,649. airflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are airflow and realtime free?
Both are open source. airflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and realtime under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between airflow and realtime?
airflow is written in Python and realtime in Elixir. 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 realtime?
Choose airflow if you want the larger community (47,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose realtime if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.