head to head · open source
vllm vs dagster
vllm has 92,055 GitHub stars, 22,349 forks, 7,953 open issues and last shipped today. dagster has 16,168 stars, 2,294 forks, 2,589 open issues and last shipped today. vllm leads on adoption by 469% (92,055 vs 16,168 stars). vllm is written in Python under Apache-2.0; dagster is written in Python under Apache-2.0. vllm has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, dagster 14%. vllm 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
| vllm | dagster | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 92K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 22K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick vllm if
- You weight community size — 92K 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 dagster if
- You want the dagster feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dagster fits your workflow better
About vllm
vLLM is a high throughput, memory efficient Python library for LLM inference and serving, built for ML engineers and platform teams who need to run open weight models on their own hardware at production scale.
About dagster
Dagster is a cloud native data pipeline orchestrator written in Python and released under the Apache 2.0 licence, built for data engineers, data scientists, and machine learning teams who declare the tables, data sets, models, and reports their pipelines should produce and need those assets tested, observable, and kept up to date from local development through production.
read the full dagster overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vllm or dagster more popular?
vllm has 92,055 GitHub stars and dagster has 16,168. vllm has the larger community by that measure.
Are vllm and dagster free?
Both are open source. vllm is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dagster under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vllm and dagster?
vllm is written in Python and dagster in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, vllm or dagster?
Choose vllm if you want the larger community (92,055 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dagster if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.