Assembly Line

Dagu

Self-hostable workflow orchestrator for teams whose main work isn't orchestration. Declarative YAML over your scripts, SSH commands, containers, etc; keep workflows separate from business logic. One binary, no database, runs on limited H/W resources. Alternative to Airflow / Cron / Job Scheduler.

Dagu is an open-source workflow engine project on GitHub under the GPL-3.0 license (strong copyleft), with 4.5k stars. It is built with Go, TypeScript, Postgres and Redis. Its last push was today.

Stars
4.5k
License
GPL-3.0
Activity
Active
Latest release
v2.25.2

Code on GitHub Website

Judgement

What it is
Complete system
What it does
A single-binary workflow scheduler that runs YAML-defined DAGs of scripts, SSH commands and containers, with a web UI and no required database.
Adopt it when
You have cron jobs and scripts that need dependencies, retries and visibility, and Airflow would be overkill.
Watch out
GPL-3.0 license, and it is not built for very high-volume orchestration.
Ready for
Usable
Runs as
Self-hosted server and command line
Built with
Go and TypeScript
How established
Established: started 4 years ago, latest release v2.25.2.
What the license allows
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.

Judged on 2026-11-03 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

GoTypeScriptPostgresRedis

Follow it down: Dagu → Go → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

Open-source alternatives to Dagu

  1. 1
    Airflow apache

    Apache Airflow - A platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows

    Framework or platform Production-ready A data team needs a standard batch scheduler with broad integrations and hiring familiarity.

    ★ 47k Apache-2.0 Python Active, pushed today
  2. 2
    Conductor conductor-oss

    Conductor is an event driven agentic workflow engine providing durable and highly resilient execution engine for applications and AI Agents

    Building block Production-ready You orchestrate many services across languages and prefer workflows defined as data with a UI over workflows written as code.

    ★ 32k Apache-2.0 Java Active, pushed today
  3. 3
    Kestra kestra-io

    Orchestrate everything, everywhere. The open-source control plane for workflows across data, infrastructure, business processes and AI agents. Declarative YAML, event-driven, any language, Git-versioned, scalable to millions of executions.

    Complete system Production-ready You need Airflow-class orchestration but want YAML flows, any language, and a UI non-Python people can use.

    ★ 30k Apache-2.0 Java Active, pushed today
  4. 4
    Dapr dapr

    Dapr is a portable runtime for building distributed applications across cloud and edge, combining event-driven architecture with workflow orchestration.

    Framework or platform Production-ready You build microservices in several languages on Kubernetes and want portable building blocks instead of vendor SDKs.

    ★ 26k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
  5. 5
    Temporal temporalio

    Temporal service

    Building block Production-ready Your system has long-running or multi-step processes like payments, provisioning or agents that must not lose progress.

    ★ 24k MIT Go Active, pushed today
  6. 6
    Prefect PrefectHQ

    Prefect is a workflow orchestration framework for building resilient data pipelines in Python.

    Framework or platform Production-ready Your data team writes Python and wants something lighter and more Pythonic than Airflow.

    ★ 24k Apache-2.0 Python Active, pushed today
  7. 7
    Argo Workflows argoproj

    Workflow Engine for Kubernetes

    Building block Production-ready Your platform already runs on Kubernetes and you want container-based batch workflows managed as Kubernetes resources.

    ★ 17k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
  8. 8
    Trigger.dev triggerdotdev

    Trigger.dev – build and deploy durable AI agents and workflows

    Framework or platform Production-ready Your TypeScript app needs long-running or retried background work and you want it in code rather than a visual builder.

    ★ 17k Apache-2.0 TypeScript Active, pushed 2 days ago

Commercial workflow orchestration engines

  1. 1
    AWS Step Functions Amazon Web Services

    AWS Step Functions lets you orchestrate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows so that you can build and update applications quickly.

    Building block Production-ready Your application runs on AWS and you need to orchestrate serverless steps with retries and visual tracing.

    Commercial
  2. 2
    Temporal Cloud Temporal Technologies

    Temporal Cloud is the easiest way to run Temporal for your applications, without hassle and with peace of mind. Talk to an expert today!

    Building block Production-ready Engineers need reliable long-running workflows like payments or provisioning and do not want to operate the Temporal cluster.

    Commercial
  3. 3
    Astronomer Astronomer

    Apache Airflow® orchestrates the world’s data, ML, and AI pipelines. Astro is the best way to build, run, and observe them at scale.

    Building block Production-ready A data team runs Airflow and wants it hosted and supported rather than operating it themselves.

    Commercial

Stars, license and activity come from GitHub and refresh on a rolling hourly schedule. The project's own description is quoted as written.