head to head · open source
airflow vs sling-cli
airflow has 47,350 GitHub stars, 18,299 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sling-cli has 919 stars, 87 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. airflow leads on adoption by 5,052% (47,350 vs 919 stars). airflow is written in Python under Apache-2.0; sling-cli is written in Go under GPL-3.0. airflow has attracted 39% as many forks as stars, sling-cli 9%. airflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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 | sling-cli | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 919 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 87 |
| 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 sling-cli if
- You want the sling-cli feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sling-cli fits your workflow better
About airflow
Apache Airflow Apache Airflow (or simply Airflow) is a platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows. When workflows are defined as code, they become more maintainable, versionable, testable, and collaborative. Use Airflow to author workflows (Dags) that orchestrate tasks. The Airflow scheduler executes your tasks on an array of workers while following the specified dependencies. Rich command line utilities make performing complex surgeries on Dags a snap. The rich user interface makes it easy to visualize pipelines running in production, monitor progress, and troubleshoot issues when…
read the full airflow overview →
About sling-cli
Slings from a data source to a data target. See docs.slingdata.io for more details. Sling is a passion project turned into a free CLI Product which offers an easy solution to create and maintain small to medium volume data pipelines using the Extract & Load (EL) approach. It focuses on data movement between: Database to Database File System to Database Database to File System API to Database API to File System Some key features: Single Binary deployment (built with Go). See installation page. Use Custom SQL as a stream: src stream='select from my table where col1 10' Manage / View / Test / Discover your…
read the full sling-cli overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is airflow or sling-cli more popular?
airflow has 47,350 GitHub stars and sling-cli has 919. airflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are airflow and sling-cli free?
Both are open source. airflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sling-cli under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between airflow and sling-cli?
airflow is written in Python and sling-cli 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 sling-cli?
Choose airflow if you want the larger community (47,350 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sling-cli if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.