head to head · open source
airflow vs steampipe
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars, 18,000 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. steampipe has 7,982 stars, 343 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. airflow leads on adoption by 491% (47,147 vs 7,982 stars). airflow is written in Python under Apache-2.0; steampipe is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. airflow has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, steampipe 4%. airflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | steampipe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 8.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 343 |
| 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 steampipe if
- You want the steampipe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and steampipe 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 steampipe
Steampipe is an AGPL 3.0, Go based zero ETL tool that maps APIs and services to SQL tables, letting anyone who already writes SQL — cloud engineers, DevSecOps and security teams, data engineers — query live data from AWS, Azure, GCP, GitHub and Kubernetes without building a pipeline or running a database.
read the full steampipe overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is airflow or steampipe more popular?
airflow has 47,147 GitHub stars and steampipe has 7,982. airflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are airflow and steampipe free?
Both are open source. airflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and steampipe under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between airflow and steampipe?
airflow is written in Python and steampipe 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 steampipe?
Choose airflow if you want the larger community (47,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose steampipe if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.