Apache Airflow is like cron jobs on steroids.
Here are some of its benefits over cron jobs.
- Task retries
- Dependencies between tasks
- Logs and success/fail metrics that go back in time
- Automatic parallelization of tasks that don’t depend on each other
- Centralized credential store so you don’t have to update each script when a password changes.
- Failure emails (to be fair, cron has this too, but it’s a bit clunky to set up)
Citation
If you find this work useful, please cite it as:
@article{yaltirakli,
title = "Apache Airflow",
author = "Yaltirakli, Gokberk",
journal = "gkbrk.com",
year = "2025",
url = "https://www.gkbrk.com/apache-airflow"
} Not using BibTeX? Click here for more citation styles.
IEEE Citation Gokberk Yaltirakli, "Apache Airflow", August, 2025. [Online]. Available: https://www.gkbrk.com/apache-airflow. [Accessed Aug. 24, 2025].
APA Style Yaltirakli, G. (2025, August 24). Apache Airflow. https://www.gkbrk.com/apache-airflow
Bluebook Style Gokberk Yaltirakli, Apache Airflow, GKBRK.COM (Aug. 24, 2025), https://www.gkbrk.com/apache-airflow
