head to head · open source
airflow vs olake
airflow has 47,350 GitHub stars, 18,299 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. olake has 1,574 stars, 273 forks, 178 open issues and last shipped yesterday. airflow leads on adoption by 2,908% (47,350 vs 1,574 stars). airflow is written in Python under Apache-2.0; olake is written in Go under Apache-2.0. airflow has attracted 39% as many forks as stars, olake 17%. airflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | olake | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 273 |
| 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 olake if
- You want the olake feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and olake 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 olake
OLake Go OLake Go is a high performance, open source data ingestion engine for replicating databases, S3, and Kafka into Apache Iceberg (or plain Parquet). Built for scalable, real time pipelines, OLake Go provides a simple web UI and CLI used to ingest into vendor lock in free Iceberg tables supporting all the query engines/warehouses. Read the docs and benchmarks at olake.io/docs . Join our active community on Slack . [!NOTE] 🎉 OLake Fusion is now live! — Automate your Apache Iceberg Table Maintenance. Check it out here → github.com/datazip inc/olake fusion 🎉 OLake Go — Super fast Sync to Apache Iceberg…
read the full olake overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is airflow or olake more popular?
airflow has 47,350 GitHub stars and olake has 1,574. airflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are airflow and olake free?
Both are open source. airflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and olake under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between airflow and olake?
airflow is written in Python and olake 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 olake?
Choose airflow if you want the larger community (47,350 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose olake if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.