Alternatives to Dagu
A self-hosted workflow orchestrator that runs scripts, SSH commands and containers from declarative YAML files. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Dagu
A self-hosted workflow orchestrator that runs scripts, SSH commands and containers from declarative YAML files.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Dagu.
Cronicle
A self-hosted, distributed task scheduler and runner with a web interface.
Cronicle offers a self-hosted web dashboard for scheduled jobs across several servers, but it is now in maintenance mode with only bug and security fixes.
Rundeck
A self-hosted runbook automation server that lets chosen users run existing scripts, tools and jobs.
Rundeck runs existing scripts on demand or on a schedule with controlled user access, but it is a larger server application that takes more effort to deploy than Dagu.
Kestra
An open-source declarative orchestration platform for scheduled and event-driven workflows, self-hosted or in the cloud.
Kestra also uses declarative workflows and adds event-driven triggers, more than 2,000 plugins and a cloud option, but it is heavier to run than Dagu's single binary.
Windmill
An open-source, self-hostable platform for turning scripts into workflows, internal apps and scheduled jobs.
Windmill builds workflows, schedules and internal apps from scripts in over 20 languages, self-hosted or in the cloud, with some features reserved for the enterprise edition.
Apache Airflow
A self-hosted platform for writing, scheduling and monitoring workflows defined as Python code.
Apache Airflow defines workflows in Python instead of YAML and scales across many workers, but you must run and maintain its scheduler, workers and web server.
Prefect
A workflow orchestration tool for scheduling, retrying and observing Python data and ML pipelines.
Prefect defines flows with Python decorators and adds built-in retries and a run dashboard, with some features belonging to its paid hosted platform.
Dagster
An open-source orchestrator for building, scheduling and monitoring data pipelines, with a hosted Dagster+ option.
Dagster is an open-source orchestrator with an asset-based model and lineage tracking, aimed at data engineering teams rather than general script workflows, with a hosted Dagster+ option.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Dagu as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
Cronie
The standard UNIX cron daemon, crond, for running programs at scheduled times on Linux.
Dagu replaces crontab lines with declarative YAML workflows and a web interface for running and monitoring jobs, shipped as a single binary.
Flyte
An open-source orchestration platform for durable data, machine learning and AI agent workflows written in Python.
Dagu is a single binary running YAML workflows over scripts and containers, lighter than Flyte but without Python-defined ML pipelines.
Ofelia
A lightweight job scheduler for Docker environments that runs cron-style tasks for containers.
Dagu runs scripts, SSH commands and containers from YAML workflows with a web interface for monitoring, as a single binary without a database.
Pueue
A command-line task manager that queues shell commands and runs them in the background.
Dagu is a self-hosted orchestrator that runs scripts and commands in ordered YAML workflows with a web interface, adding more setup than a local queue.
Supercronic
A crontab-compatible job runner built to run scheduled jobs inside containers.
Dagu replaces crontab files with YAML workflows and adds a web interface for running and monitoring jobs, as a single self-hosted binary.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
