Dagster

Freemium

An orchestration platform for the whole data lifecycle.

Data Engineering & ETL

Orchestration

Start exploring Website

Scores

Popularity

2/5

Learning Curve

4/5

Flexibility

5/5

Performance

4/5

Portability

4/5

About

Dagster is an open-source data orchestration platform that puts a software-defined philosophy at the center of data engineering. Unlike traditional workflow tools that focus on tasks, Dagster treats data assets as first-class citizens. It allows you to define data pipelines as code in Python, with strong type checking, testing, and local development capabilities. Dagster integrates with a wide range of tools including dbt, Spark, Snowflake, and Airflow. The platform features a rich web UI for monitoring, debugging, and inspecting assets. It's designed for data engineers who want to apply software engineering best practices to their data pipelines.

Key Features

Software-defined assets as the core abstraction
Type-safe Python API for defining pipelines
Built-in testing and local development
Rich web UI for monitoring and debugging
Integrations with dbt, Snowflake, Spark, and more
Resource management and configurability
Sensor-based automation and event-driven triggers

Pros

Asset-centric model aligns with how data teams think
Excellent developer experience with strong typing and testing
Open source with active community
Can orchestrate existing tools like dbt and Airflow
Great debugging and inspection capabilities
Modern Pythonic codebase

Cons

Smaller community and ecosystem compared to Airflow
Steeper learning curve for non-Python developers
Younger platform with fewer battle-tested patterns
Fewer native integrations than mature competitors
Self-hosting requires operational effort

Pricing

Freemium

Open SourceFree

· Full orchestration capabilities
· Self-hosted
· Community support

Cloud FreeFree

· Up to 250 runs/month
· Basic monitoring
· Community support

Cloud ProContact sales

· Unlimited runs
· Advanced monitoring
· Priority support
· SSO

EnterpriseContact sales

· Unlimited runs
· Enterprise security
· Dedicated support
· Custom SLAs

Possible Stacks

GCP ELT Pipeline

Project

A fully managed, serverless ELT pipeline on Google Cloud: Fivetran handles ingestion with zero-maintenance connectors; BigQuery stores and queries petabytes without cluster management; dbt transforms data into analytics-ready models; Dagster orchestrates the pipeline as typed, lineage-tracked assets; Metabase provides self-service BI on top.

Python

Programming

BigQuery

Databases

Google Cloud Platform

Hosting

Data

Related Tools

Works well with (3)

Python

Python is a high-level, interpreted, dynamically typed programming language emphasising readability and simplicity. It dominates data science, machine learning, and general-purpose scripting.

Open SourceProgramming Languages

PostgreSQL

World's most advanced open-source relational database. Known for reliability, data integrity, and extensibility.

Open SourceDatabases

MLflow

Open-source ML lifecycle platform for experiment tracking, model registry, and deployment — the de facto standard for managing training runs across teams.

Open SourceData & ML Libraries

Integrates with (3)

Snowflake

Snowflake is a cloud-native data platform that fully separates storage, compute, and services into independent layers. Virtual warehouses (compute clusters) can be paused and resumed in seconds, and multiple warehouses can query the same data simultaneously — making it the dominant cloud data warehouse for multi-workload analytics.

Usage BasedDatabases

DuckDB

DuckDB is an in-process analytical SQL database optimized for OLAP workloads, enabling fast columnar queries directly on Parquet, CSV, and JSON files without a separate server.

Open SourceDatabases

dbt

Transformation tool that enables data teams to transform data in their warehouse using SQL and software engineering best practices like version control, testing, and modularity.

FreemiumData Engineering & ETL

Framework of (1)

Python

Python is a high-level, interpreted, dynamically typed programming language emphasising readability and simplicity. It dominates data science, machine learning, and general-purpose scripting.

Open SourceProgramming Languages

Alternative to (2)

Apache Airflow

Apache Airflow is an open-source workflow orchestration platform that lets you define, schedule, and monitor data pipelines as Python code using Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). It is the de facto standard for orchestrating data engineering workflows at scale.

Open SourceData Engineering & ETL

Prefect

Python-native workflow orchestration framework for building resilient data pipelines. Lighter and more developer-friendly than Airflow, with a managed cloud option and a fully free self-hosted edition.

FreemiumData Engineering & ETL

Learning Resources

No resources yet — check back soon.

Scores

Popularity

2/5

Learning Curve

4/5

Flexibility

5/5

Performance

4/5

Portability

4/5

Pricing

Freemium

Open SourceFree

· Full orchestration capabilities
· Self-hosted
· Community support

Cloud FreeFree

· Up to 250 runs/month
· Basic monitoring
· Community support

Cloud ProContact sales

· Unlimited runs
· Advanced monitoring
· Priority support
· SSO

EnterpriseContact sales

· Unlimited runs
· Enterprise security
· Dedicated support
· Custom SLAs

Links

Website Docs GitHub

Vendor

Dagster Labs

Website →

Details

Maintained: Yes
Tool type: Orchestration
Primary language: Python
Hosting: Cloud & Self-hosted
Open source: Yes
GitHub stars: 15.4k
Stars updated: 2026-04-26

Dagster

Scores

About

Key Features

Pros

Cons

Pricing

Possible Stacks

Related Tools

Works well with (3)

Python

PostgreSQL

MLflow

Integrates with (3)

Snowflake

DuckDB

dbt

Framework of (1)

Python

Alternative to (2)

Apache Airflow

Prefect

Learning Resources

Scores

Pricing

Links

Vendor

Tags

Details