Databases · pricing
Apache Airflow pricing
Apache Airflow publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the databases tools listed alongside it.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately
- Tiers
- 1
- Free tier
- Yes
Apache Airflow plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Airflow | Free | 3 | Entry tier |
Where Apache Airflow stops being free
Apache Airflow, Free
- Full scheduler and web UI
- All provider packages
- No task or DAG limits
No paid tier on record
Apache Airflow lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full Apache Airflow feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- Pipelines as Python
- Web UI
- Cloud provider packages
- Jinja templating
- Retries and dependencies
- Extensible operators
People bring Apache Airflow in for scheduling nightly etl where step order and retries matter, coordinating machine learning training and evaluation runs, orchestrating dbt runs alongside extraction and loading, replacing a sprawl of cron jobs with dependencies and visible run history. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Apache Airflow are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Databases
Too few databases tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apache Airflow (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately | - | |
| Apache Solr | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs Apache Airflow |
| NATS | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs Apache Airflow |
| Redpanda | Free | Source-available community edition with paid enterprise and cloud tiers | - | vs Apache Airflow |
| OpenSearch | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately | - | vs Apache Airflow |
| RabbitMQ | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed services billed separately | - | vs Apache Airflow |
| Meilisearch | Free | Open source, no licence fee; managed cloud billed separately | - | vs Apache Airflow |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Apache Airflow badges page.
Before you pay for Apache Airflow
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: a single tier at Free. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
Apache Airflow runs on linux, docker, kubernetes, self-hosted, and is published by Apache Software Foundation of Wilmington, Delaware, United States. The full record is on the Apache Airflow review, and the rest of the category is under best databases tools.
Apache Airflow pricing questions
- How much does Apache Airflow cost?
- Apache Airflow publishes a single tier, Apache Airflow, at Free.
- Does Apache Airflow have a free plan?
- Yes. The Apache Airflow tier costs nothing and covers full scheduler and web ui, all provider packages, no task or dag limits.
- Which databases tools can I use without paying?
- 8 of the 8 databases tools listed alongside Apache Airflow have a free tier: Apache Solr, NATS, Redpanda, OpenSearch, RabbitMQ.
- What am I actually paying for with Apache Airflow?
- The record lists 6 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for scheduling nightly etl where step order and retries matter, coordinating machine learning training and evaluation runs, orchestrating dbt runs alongside extraction and loading.
- Does Apache Airflow charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 1 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these Apache Airflow prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare Apache Airflow against before paying?
- The closest databases tools in this directory are Apache Solr, NATS, Redpanda, OpenSearch. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Apache Airflow covering price, platforms and features.