What is Kestra used for?

Kestra is an open-source, event-driven orchestration and scheduling platform where data, AI and infrastructure workflows are defined declaratively in YAML and managed from a UI. It is a good fit for orchestrating data pipelines, infrastructure and DevOps automation, and event-driven business processes.

Is Kestra open source?

Yes. Kestra is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at kestra-io/kestra and is written mainly in Java.

Yes. Kestra is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Kestra?

Yes. Kestra can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Kestra an alternative to?

Kestra is an open-source alternative to AWS Step Functions, Azure Logic Apps, Amazon EventBridge and Google Cloud Workflows. Other open-source alternatives to AWS Step Functions include Conductor OSS, Inngest and Temporal.

Is Kestra actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Kestra was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.0.4, published on 29 September 2026. The project has 29k stars on GitHub.

Kestra: open-source alternative to AWS Step Functions

About Kestra

Kestra is an orchestration platform, open source, for data pipelines, AI workflows and infrastructure automation. It brings scheduled and event-triggered automation together under one declarative interface that does not depend on a programming language, applying infrastructure-as-code practices to pipelines so that reliable workflows can be defined in a few lines of YAML.

Workflows can be built in the UI, written by a built-in AI Copilot, or generated from coding agents such as Claude Code and Cursor using agent skills, and everything can be kept as code with Git integration even when it was authored visually. A large plugin ecosystem connects it to external systems, and key concepts cover tasks, triggers and flows. The project is written in Java, with topics covering orchestration, high availability, pipeline-as-code and DevOps, and the 2.0 release adds new capabilities.

Kestra is Apache-2.0 licensed and can be self-hosted, with a quick start that gets a first workflow running in minutes. It targets data engineers, platform teams and automation developers who want an alternative to schedulers such as Airflow with a more declarative style.

Key features

Declarative YAML workflow definitions
Scheduled and event-driven triggers
Visual editor and AI Copilot
Git version control integration
Large plugin ecosystem
Agent skills for coding agents

Good fit for

→Orchestrating data pipelines
→Infrastructure and DevOps automation
→Event-driven business processes

Built with: Java
Tags: orchestration; workflow; scheduling; data-pipelines; yaml; devops; event-driven; java; automation

Kestra: questions and answers

What is Kestra used for?: Kestra is an open-source, event-driven orchestration and scheduling platform where data, AI and infrastructure workflows are defined declaratively in YAML and managed from a UI. It is a good fit for orchestrating data pipelines, infrastructure and DevOps automation, and event-driven business processes.
Is Kestra open source?: Yes. Kestra is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at kestra-io/kestra and is written mainly in Java.
Is Kestra free?: Yes. Kestra is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Kestra?: Yes. Kestra can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Kestra an alternative to?: Kestra is an open-source alternative to AWS Step Functions, Azure Logic Apps, Amazon EventBridge and Google Cloud Workflows. Other open-source alternatives to AWS Step Functions include Conductor OSS, Inngest and Temporal.
Is Kestra actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Kestra was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.0.4, published on 29 September 2026. The project has 29k stars on GitHub.