81
Stack Score
Editorial pick✓ Verified working
Kestra
YAML-defined open-source workflow orchestrator
Try Kestra✓ Free trial available
Best for
Best for solo-agency or in-house engineering teams orchestrating data pipelines who prefer YAML over Python DAGs.
At a glance
- Pricing
- open-sourcefrom $200/mo
- Setup time
- 1 hour
- Learning curve
- medium
- Last verified
- 5/25/2026
What we love
- ✓YAML-first authoring works for non-Python teams
- ✓Wide plugin library for common data tools
- ✓Genuinely open-source self-host option
Where it falls short
- −Smaller community than Airflow or Dagster
- −YAML can get unwieldy on large flows
- −Cloud tier still maturing
Pricing
✓ Pricing verified Jun 21, 20263 tiers
Open Source
$0
forever (self-hosted)
- ✓Unlimited flows
- ✓All plugins
- ✓Community support
Cloud
$200
per month
- ✓Managed service
- ✓SSO
- ✓Email support
Enterprise
Custom
annual contract
- ✓Premium support
- ✓Custom SLAs
- ✓Air-gapped deploys
Why we picked it
Easier to author than Airflow, less opinionated than Dagster. Good middle path. — MoreAI.tools editor
Overview
Kestra is an open-source orchestration platform configured in YAML with hundreds of pre-built plugins. Targets data and engineering teams as an Airflow alternative with a friendlier authoring model.
Key features
- ●YAML flow definitions with versioning
- ●600+ pre-built plugins
- ●Built-in scheduler and event triggers
- ●Real-time UI with logs and metrics
- ●Embeddable into existing apps
Best use cases
Connect siloed apps
Sync customer, billing, or task data across the SaaS stack on a recurring schedule.
Document or data extraction
Pull structured fields out of PDFs, emails, or web pages and route them to a system of record.
Integrations
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