Dagster alternatives: 11 data orchestration tools compared
Teams look for a Dagster alternative when the credit meter, the plan gates or the ownership change in July 2026 prompt a fresh comparison. Some want a flat price or an engine with no cap on flows, some want the Airflow ecosystem, and some want a runtime that is not tied to a data catalogue.
Short answer: We open the ranking with smaller vendors and put the established brands from fourth place onward. For Dagster users, the top three picks from our data orchestration tool ranking are Kestra, Orchestra and Windmill. Pick Kestra if you want a French vendor and flows defined without Python code. These 11 products are all in Best Data Orchestration Tools in 2026; the notes say how each one compares with Dagster.
Vendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. How that works.
Pricing: Solo and Starter monthly fee plus a per-credit rate; 30-day trial; Pro quoted; prices published
Established in: United States
Built for: Teams that model pipelines as data assets and can estimate monthly credit volume
Not for: Teams that would rather wait until the Prefect merger completes
01
Why buyers look past Dagster
01
Every materialisation is a billable credit
Dagster+ Solo costs 10 dollars a month plus 0.040 dollars per credit, and Starter 100 dollars plus 0.035. A credit is one asset materialisation or one op that runs, so a pipeline with many small assets or frequent partitions raises the bill in step with its activity. Serverless compute adds 0.010 dollars per minute.
02
Features sit behind the Pro quote
Starter allows three users, five code locations and one deployment. SAML, SCIM provisioning, audit logs, EU data residency (Dagster EU) and a dedicated support channel appear only on the Pro column, which is sold on request. A group that outgrows three seats moves to a quoted contract.
03
The vendor behind it is changing hands
Prefect announced on 13 July 2026 that it is acquiring Dagster Labs. The letter promises the Dagster brand, active open-source development and unchanged contracts, and about 40 Dagster staff are joining Prefect. Buyers who prefer a settled supplier for a multi-year platform choice often compare other options before renewing.
your pipelines are made of AWS services and a state machine fits
#12
03
What each one does differently
1
Kestra
France / United States · On request
Kestra writes a workflow as YAML and runs it on an Apache-2.0 engine, with no limit on flows or executions in either edition. The company is Kestra Technologies SAS in France. Teams that find Dagster's Python asset model heavy for plain scheduled jobs can describe those jobs declaratively. Single sign-on and audit logs belong to Enterprise, which is priced per instance.
Switch from Dagster if you want a French vendor and flows defined without Python code.
Orchestra, from Orchestra Technologies Limited in England and Wales, charges per plan rather than per run. Lean costs nothing for one user and Scale-up is a flat monthly fee for ten, both with unlimited pipelines. Its included compute stops at 100 minutes and 1,000 tasks a day, and it centres on dbt and warehouse jobs, so heavy custom Python is a poorer match.
Switch from Dagster if a predictable flat fee matters more than a per-credit meter.
Windmill takes scripts in more than 20 languages and chains them into flows, drawn as a DAG or written in Python or TypeScript. The Community edition has unlimited executions. Paid Enterprise bills per builder, per non-builder and per worker. The repository mixes Apache-2.0, AGPLv3 and a proprietary licence, so a feature may sit in a directory with different terms.
Switch from Dagster if your jobs are scripts in several languages rather than one Python codebase.
Mage Technologies sells managed pipelines for a monthly fee plus a charge per execution minute, where a minute is 1 CPU and 4 GB of RAM while work runs. Python, SQL, R and dbt blocks live in one editor, and Starter has one developer seat. Hybrid or private deployment is listed on the Enterprise card without an amount.
Switch from Dagster if analysts and engineers should share one block-based editor and pay by minute.
Apache Airflow is the Python scheduler under the Apache Software Foundation, with workflows in code, a web interface for runs and connections to Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Azure. Its home page names no hosting service, price or support plan, so installation, upgrades and workers become your own work, in return for no vendor invoice at all.
Switch from Dagster if you accept running the platform yourself to avoid any per-use charge.
Astro is managed Apache Airflow from Astronomer, Inc., metered in parts: deployments by size and hour, workers by hour with scale to zero, and dedicated clusters on top. Business and Enterprise are quotes, so the starting figure is only a floor. Astro Private Cloud covers running the service in your own environment.
Switch from Dagster if you want Airflow's ecosystem but not the job of operating it.
Argo Workflows exists as a Kubernetes custom resource, and each step is a container laid out as a sequence or a dependency graph. The project page names no managed offer and its repository carries Apache-2.0, so the cost is the cluster you already run. Connectors to warehouses are absent from the description; those steps are containers you write.
Switch from Dagster if Kubernetes is already your platform and steps are container images.
Temporal keeps workflow state through crashes and deploys, with logic written in Go, Java, Python, TypeScript, .NET, PHP, Ruby or Rust. Cloud bills per million actions plus active and retained storage, with no base fee. It is a developer runtime, not a pipeline scheduler, and the pricing page lists SDKs, not warehouse connectors.
Switch from Dagster if you need durable application workflows more than asset lineage.
Prefect Technologies sells Cloud on four plans: Hobby for two users, Starter for three, Team for four to eight billed per user, and Enterprise on a quote. Run history lasts seven days on Hobby and Starter and fourteen on Team. As Dagster's new owner, it is the nearest route for teams that still want a Python-first engine.
Switch from Dagster if you want to stay with the group now owning Dagster, on a user-based price.
Azure Data Factory V2 bills orchestration per 1,000 activity runs and the work per integration runtime hour, with separate rates for the Azure, Managed VNET and self-hosted runtimes. Data movement counts in DIU-hours. Its price table loads through script, so region rates need the Azure calculator, and data flows add further charges.
Switch from Dagster if your sources and sinks already sit in Azure and you want one invoice.
Step Functions charges Standard workflows per state transition, retries included, and Express workflows per request, duration and memory. The free tier covers 4,000 state transitions a month. Because each step is billed, many small states or frequent retries cost more than the same logic in fewer states, and nothing here models assets or lineage.
Switch from Dagster if your pipelines are made of AWS services and a state machine fits.
Orchestra: Lean is free for one user and Scale-up is a flat monthly fee for ten, with unlimited pipelines on both.
02
You would rather describe flows in YAML than Python
Kestra: The Apache-2.0 engine has no limit on flows or executions, and the vendor is French.
03
You want to run the scheduler yourself with no vendor price
Apache Airflow: It is Apache-licensed Python workflow software, and installation and upkeep are yours.
04
Your platform already runs on Kubernetes
Argo Workflows: Each step is a container managed as a Kubernetes resource, so cost is the cluster you operate.
05
You still want a Python-first engine from the new owner
Prefect: Hobby covers two users, Starter three and Team four to eight, billed per user.
04
When Dagster is still the right choice
Dagster stays a sound choice when the team thinks in assets and wants lineage, freshness policies, asset checks and partitions inside the orchestrator. Its open-source engine remains available, and the vendor's letter promises that the brand, contracts and current pricing carry on after the acquisition. If the credit rate is the only complaint, estimate your monthly materialisations on Starter before moving.
05
What moving off Dagster involves
01
Assets do not translate into tasks one to one
Dagster models data assets with lineage and checks, whereas most alternatives model tasks or jobs. List your assets, partitions, freshness policies and asset checks first, then decide where each concept will live, because several tools keep lineage in a separate catalogue or not at all.
02
Rebuild schedules, sensors and alerts
Declarative Automation, schedules and sensors do not export. Re-create them as triggers in the new tool, and rewire the Slack, Teams or email alerts and any run history you rely on. Run both systems in parallel for one full cycle of your slowest pipeline before switching off the old one.
03
Check where the data plane runs
On Hybrid, your code executes in your own ECS, Kubernetes or Docker environment, so images and secrets may transfer unchanged to Argo, Airflow or Kestra. On Serverless, they ran in Dagster's environment and need a new home.
06
Questions about replacing Dagster
6 answers
How much does Dagster cost?
Dagster+ Solo is 10 dollars a month plus 0.040 dollars per credit, and Starter is 100 dollars a month plus 0.035 per credit, with serverless compute at 0.010 dollars per minute.
Pro is quoted. Hybrid deployments carry no compute charge, and a 30-day trial is listed.
What counts as a Dagster credit?
The pricing FAQ defines a credit as the sum of asset materialisations and ops executed. Each materialised asset counts as one, and so does each op that runs, whether in a job or inside an asset.
Is Dagster open source?
The engine is open source and can be self-hosted, and the docs describe Dagster+ as a managed platform built on it. Dagster+ adds the web interface hosting, metadata stores, alerting, insights and access control that you would otherwise run yourself.
Who owns Dagster now?
Prefect announced in July 2026 that it is acquiring Dagster Labs. The pricing page now carries a notice that Dagster is part of Prefect, and the founder's letter says the brand and contracts stay as they are.
Which alternative has no usage meter?
Kestra's engine and Windmill's Community edition both allow unlimited executions, Airflow and Argo Workflows are open-source projects with no vendor price, and Orchestra charges a flat monthly fee by plan. You still pay for the servers or clusters where they run.
Does Dagster offer EU data residency?
Dagster+ EU is documented, and the plan table lists EU data residency in the Pro column only. Kestra Technologies SAS is a French company, and Orchestra is registered in England and Wales.
—
Sources
Checked 10 November 2026
Dagster pricing: Solo 10 dollars, Starter 100 dollars, per-credit rates, serverless 0.010 per minute, three users, five code locations, Pro features, 30-day trial, credit definition.
Prefect is acquiring Dagster: Acquisition letter, brand, contracts and open source continue, about 40 staff joining Prefect.
Dagster+ docs: Managed platform on the open-source engine, Serverless and Hybrid, managed features.
Kestra: YAML workflows, Apache-2.0 engine, Enterprise features, French company.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Checked and edited by Sebastiaan Smits, last on 10 November 2026. The editorial process explains the method.
