head to head · open source
airflow vs seatunnel
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars, 18,000 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. seatunnel has 9,709 stars, 2,431 forks, 705 open issues and last shipped yesterday. airflow leads on adoption by 386% (47,147 vs 9,709 stars). airflow is written in Python under Apache-2.0; seatunnel is written in Java under Apache-2.0. airflow has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, seatunnel 25%. airflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (apache, 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 | seatunnel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 9.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 seatunnel if
- You want the seatunnel 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 seatunnel 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 seatunnel
Apache SeaTunnel is a multimodal, high performance, distributed data integration tool that is capable of synchronizing vast amounts of data daily. It is an Apache Software Foundation project written in Java and released under the Apache 2.0 license, with a home on the web at seatunnel.apache.org. The project has been in development for roughly nine years and has accumulated 9,652 stars and 2,407 forks on GitHub. It sits in the Data & Analytics ecosystem, specifically in data engineering and integration, and it is built around a connector driven model: sources, sinks, and transforms are configured as jobs, and tho…
read the full seatunnel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is airflow or seatunnel more popular?
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars and seatunnel has 9,709. airflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are airflow and seatunnel free?
Both are open source. airflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and seatunnel under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between airflow and seatunnel?
airflow is written in Python and seatunnel 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 seatunnel?
Choose airflow if you want the larger community (47,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose seatunnel if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.