#1010th of 102 in Backends, databases and hosting
kestra
Event-driven workflow orchestrator with YAML flows, a UI editor and AI tasks
- Stars
- 30.2k
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Last commit
- Nov 2026
- Last release
- Nov 2026
- Language
- Java
26,327 on 21 Apr 202630,203 on 10 Nov 2026
From GitHub's daily star counts.
Checked on GitHub.
Overview
Kestra is a Java workflow orchestrator where flows are declared in YAML and edited through a code editor, a no-code editor or an AI Copilot, all kept in sync. It runs scheduled and event-triggered flows using hundreds of plugins (databases, cloud, message buses, scripts in Python, Node.js, R, Go, Shell). Version 2.0 adds AI agent and RAG task types, an MCP server exposing flows as tools, and gRPC worker communication.
Who it is for: Data and platform engineers wanting a self-hosted, code-first orchestrator
Strengths
- Flows are plain YAML with Git sync, Terraform provider and API, so logic stays in code
- Hundreds of plugins plus scripts in any language, run via Docker, Kubernetes or cloud VM task runners
- Workers connect to the control plane over gRPC, so they can sit in another region or restricted network
- Built-in MCP server and AI agent/RAG tasks call OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Bedrock and Ollama
Weaknesses
- RBAC, Policies, Cases, Promote and external log store are Enterprise Edition only
- 2.0 has breaking changes, e.g. ForEach and ForEachItem replaced by Loop, and the image suffix renamed
- Quick start mounts the Docker socket and runs as root
- Slim image fetches plugins from Maven Central at first use, so needs outbound access
What it needs
- no GPU
- Docker + Compose
- Needs Docker, PostgreSQL (production deployments, per cloud templates), Maven Central (slim image plugin auto-install)
- Models: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Amazon Bedrock, Ollama
- port 8080
Quick answers
Is kestra open source?
Yes. Its code is on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license.
Can you run kestra with Docker?
Yes. Its repository has a Docker setup: a Dockerfile, a Compose file or a published image.
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