To Build or to Buy? DIY Orchestration with Airflow vs. A Fully Managed Service

Apache Airflow® is a popular open-source workflow-scheduling platform, but when used solely for data orchestration, it can be challenging to scale, manage, and maintain due to its lack of essential features such as built-in version control and CI/CD integration. While building a custom Airflow infrastructure might seem appealing to organizations with engineering prowess, it often results in high costs and complexity, diverting skilled talent from core business-focused projects. Fully managed services like Astro offer a more sustainable and pragmatic solution, providing out-of-the-box capabilities such as seamless integration with existing security infrastructures, data lineage collection, and a single control plane for managing deployments, all while maintaining compatibility with open-source standards to avoid vendor lock-in. Managed services are generally more efficient for organizations of all sizes, as they alleviate the burden of maintaining infrastructure and allow organizations to focus on innovation rather than upkeep.