Airflow 129 schedules tasks and lets a task say it updated an asset (Assets Replace Datasets). Dagster 177,056 (github.com/dagster-io/dagster (https://github.com/dagster-io/dagster 16,232 ), Apache 2.0, by Dagster Labs, formerly Elementl) turns that around: you declare the tables and files that should exist, and Dagster derives the work from their dependencies. Version 1.0 shipped in August 2022; this section runs Dagster 1.13.25 (1 October
with dagster-dbt 0.29.25 in a Python 3.13 image (dagster-dbt does not support 3.14 yet), calling the
same booknest_pipeline.py functions as the Airflow DAG. On 13 July 2026 Prefect 74,615 (Prefect 3: Python-Native Flows) announced it is acquiring Dagster Labs; both companies say Dagster stays a separate, actively developed open-source product.