Kestra vs Microsoft Power Automate
Kestra and Microsoft Power Automate are both workflow automation software. Kestra is open source under Apache-2.0, with 30k GitHub stars. Microsoft Power Automate is a commercial product from Microsoft.
Which to pick
- Pick Kestra when
- You need Airflow-class orchestration but want YAML flows, any language, and a UI non-Python people can use.
- Pick Microsoft Power Automate when
- A Microsoft 365 organisation wants approvals and automations around SharePoint, Outlook and Teams.
Side by side
An orchestration platform where workflows for data, infrastructure and business processes are declared in YAML and run on schedules or events, with a web UI.
Microsoft's workflow automation with cloud flows across connectors, desktop RPA and approvals inside Microsoft 365.
Features such as SSO and multi-tenancy are in the paid enterprise edition.
Premium connectors and RPA need extra licences, and error handling is clumsy.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Cloud service and desktop app
Java, Vue, TypeScript and PostgreSQL
Not published
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive)
Closed source, sold by Microsoft
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
30k GitHub stars
483 Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 7 years ago, latest release v2.0.7.
Not known
Other comparisons
More workflow automation tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.