Every category where a model named Apache Airflow for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant	Since September 2026
Workflow orchestration	Data platform	17%	2 of 79	31%	65	criticized challenger	▼−2Since September 2026: 16% → 14%, −2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
ETL and ELT	Data platform	0%	15 of 75	29%	24	criticized challenger	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
ML platforms	Data platform	0%	56 of 107	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Azure Machine Learning at 21%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.

Movement

Since September 2026, Apache Airflow held within the floor in all three categories: no change cleared 11 points.

Best category · Orchestration · by segment

Small business▲+4Since September 2026: 2% → 6%, +4 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

6%from 2% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 7 pointsRank 13 → 6 of 81

Mid-market▼−2Since September 2026: 16% → 14%, −2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

14%from 16% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 9 pointsRank 3 of 72, unchanged

Enterprise▼−1Since September 2026: 29% → 27%, −1 point. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.

27%from 29% in September 2026

Inside the floor by 10 pointsRank 1 of 103, unchanged

All categories · Mid-market

Category	September 2026	Now	Change	Reading	Rank
Orchestration	16%	14%	▼−2Since September 2026: 16% → 14%, −2 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.	Within noise	Rank 3 → 2 of 79
ETL	0%	0%	=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.	Within noise	Rank 11 → 15 of 75
ML platforms	0%	0%	newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now.	New this edition	Rank 56 of 107, unchanged

Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.

The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions

By model

How each model treated Apache Airflow across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.

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Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	1	2	3	7
GPT-5.4 mini	2	2	0	1	5
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0	1	6	7
Perplexity Sonar	1	1	0	1	3
Grok 4.20	2	5	1	1	9
Mistral Small	3	1	2	0	6
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	4	3	2	10
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	2	0	2
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	2	3	2	8
Kimi K2	1	4	0	3	8
GLM 4.7 FlashX	2	1	1	2	6
MiniMax M2.5	1	3	1	1	6
GPT-6 Luna	1	3	0	2	6
Muse Glimmer 30B	3	1	0	3	7

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct29 labels4

Paraphrase47 labels12

Comparative43 labels17not counted in share

Budget-constrained42 labels11

Scale-constrained30 labelsNone

Negative52 labels1not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative243 labels in all, every segment counted; 27 of the 45 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Need scheduled ETL / batch data pipelines and you have Python engineers to operate it → Apache Airflow self-hosted. Lowest license cost and largest community.” Muse Glimmer 30B · Orchestration · budget prompt · first choice

“Most established open-source tool, massive community, rich plugin ecosystem... Choose Airflow for mature, community-driven data orchestration.” Mistral Small · Orchestration · comparative prompt · first choice

“my default is Apache Airflow if you have engineers and mean data pipelines; n8n if you mean automating business apps and APIs.” GPT-6 Luna · Orchestration · budget prompt · first choice

“Maturity: Most established open-source workflow engine... Choose Airflow if you need maximum ecosystem maturity” Kimi K2 · Orchestration · comparative prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“The Budget Trap: Why Apache Airflow is often a bad choice” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Orchestration · budget prompt · hard negative

“Tool to avoid: Apache Airflow (for Real-Time Streaming)” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Orchestration · negative prompt · hard negative

“skip legacy Apache Airflow and adopt Prefect Cloud” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Orchestration · direct prompt · hard negative

“Airflow is built for batch data pipelines with explicit dependencies, not for low-latency event-driven or long-running durable business processes.” Muse Glimmer 30B · Orchestration · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Apache Airflow, over the 243 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Apache Airflow was named but was not.

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ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Dagster152 of 24318Compare →

Prefect150 of 24334Compare →

Temporal99 of 2435Not among the top eight

Zapier83 of 24315Compare →

n8n73 of 24313Compare →

Make64 of 24319Compare →

Camunda59 of 2435Not among the top eight

Argo Workflows52 of 2430Not among the top eight

Fivetran48 of 24311Not among the top eight

Astronomer Astro43 of 2430Not among the top eight

A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Apache Airflow. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 220 of the 243 answers that named Apache Airflow and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

kestra.io84

larksuite.com50

teamwork.com50

getorchestra.io46

cognism.com45

ones.com45

wrike.com45

kanerika.com40

devopsschool.com39

g2.com37

481 of the 481 domain citations in answers naming Apache Airflow came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

teamwork.com/blog/workflow-orchestration-tools50

cognism.com/blog/data-orchestration-tools45

larksuite.com/en_us/blog/workflow-orchestration-tools45

wrike.com/workflow-guide/workflow-orchestration-tools42

kanerika.com/blogs/workflow-orchestration-tools35

kestra.io/resources/infrastructure/workflow-orchestration-tools35

pracdata.io/p/state-of-workflow-orchestration-ecosystem-202534

devopsschool.com/blog/top-10-workflow-orchestration-tools-features-pros-cons-comparison30

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Search and answers

apache.org is not in Google's top ten for any of the category's searches. In the answers, Apache Airflow takes 17% of first choices and Prefect takes 21%.

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In search

Google, US estimates

Position for “workflow orchestration tool”

–

not in the top ten

Position for “workflow orchestration tools”

–

not in the top ten

Searches for its name, Google: 8,100 a month (“apache airflow”)
AI search demand for its name, est.: 271 a month
Organic visits to its site: about 1,144,025 a month
Searches its site ranks for: 44,247 · 10,306 in the top three
Sites linking to it: 174,267
Paid Google search: No ads found in the estimate; that does not mean it runs none

Ads on GoogleDetailLess

1 ads · 1 text · 0 shown in the last 30 days

First shown March 2025, as GridGain Systems, verified. 1 more by other advertisers linking to it.

On Google's pages: 1

In answers

This edition

Share of first choices

17%

rank 2 of 79 in orchestration

Segment leader

21%

Prefect

First choices: 27 across its categories
Named in: 243 answers
Its own site cited: in 220 of the answers that named it

Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.

What it publishes

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Addresses on apache.org

2,858

subdomains included

Content

1,384

counted in the table below

Documentation

375

Product · Integration

16 · 0

Kind	Pages	Last 90 days	Latest
News or press	1,081	12	2026-09-03
Blog	228	1	2026-07-01
Template or tool	38	undated
Report or ebook	14	undated
Conference or event	10	0	2026-06-09
Glossary or explainer	9	undated
Case study	2	undated
Webinar or virtual event	2	undated

Most recent

2026-09-03Security scanning at foundation scale news or press
2026-09-02Asf plus one newsletter august 2026 news or press
2026-09-01The apache software foundation advances open source infrastructure and celebrates community growth in fy26 news or press
2026-09-01The apache software foundation announces keynote speakers for community over code glasgow 2026 news or press
2026-08-27The apache software foundation announces new top level projects 6 news or press
2026-08-18Apache geode 2 0 part iii lessons learned and the path forward news or press

How it is countedHide how it is counted

Every page apache.org exposes, subdomains included. Kind is read from the address and title. The last 90 days, the latest date and the twelve months count pages by when they were published, from the site's feeds, a date in the address, or the page's own publication date, read from up to a hundred of its most recently changed pages; a page that says only when it last changed is counted in its kind but not in when, so the recent counts are a floor, and a kind none of whose pages gives a publication date reads undated. An event counts as online when its address or title says so (webinar, on demand, virtual or online summit); a conference, summit, trade show, expo or roadshow that does not say so is counted as a conference or event, which on a vendor's site is mostly in person. Read September 29, 2026.

Names read as Apache Airflow

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Apache Airflow; a claim can dispute any of them.

Airflow 17Prefect/Airflow 1

Follow Apache Airflow

An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.

Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Apache Airflow's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Apache Airflow, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives

A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for Apache Airflow by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:

where Apache Airflow is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
who was chosen in the answers that did not name Apache Airflow, and every reason the record gives;
a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.

Badges

Wins only: a badge exists where Apache Airflow is ranked in a category's top three this edition. Three sizes, one file each, light and dark; the code is under each.

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Apache Airflow is among the products AI models recommend first in Workflow orchestration this edition. Each badge says so in the buyer's words, names the edition, and links to the standing. The next edition issues a new badge; this one stays true as a record of October 2026.

Wide · 320 × 104 Website, beside other badges

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/it-data/workflow-orchestration/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/apache-airflow--workflow-orchestration-wide.svg" alt="Among AI models' top three in Workflow orchestration, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="320" height="104"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Workflow orchestration standing, where the claim can be checked.

Square · 240 × 240 LinkedIn, slides

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/it-data/workflow-orchestration/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/apache-airflow--workflow-orchestration-square.svg" alt="Among AI models' top three in Workflow orchestration, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="240" height="240"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Workflow orchestration standing, where the claim can be checked.

Compact · 200 × 56 Email signature, footer

Show the code

<a href="https://it-ai-index.com/it-data/workflow-orchestration/"><img src="https://it-ai-index.com/badges/2026-10/apache-airflow--workflow-orchestration-compact.svg" alt="Among AI models' top three in Workflow orchestration, October 2026 Edition, IT AI Recommendation Index" width="200" height="56"></a>

Copy the code as it is. The link is part of the badge: it points at the Workflow orchestration standing, where the claim can be checked.

Badges read on light and dark pages. Alt text carries the claim, the category, the edition and the index, so it stays a citation where the image does not load.