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ARIS BPA vs Apache Airflow comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.8
Apache Airflow offers high ROI due to open-source features, Python integration, and efficient pipeline building, though measurement varies.
Sentiment score
6.2
ARIS BPA varies in ROI timelines, enhancing process understanding and control but with hard-to-quantify financial impacts.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.6
Users primarily rely on community resources and comprehensive documentation for Apache Airflow, with minimal direct technical assistance needed.
Sentiment score
6.7
ARIS BPA's support is praised for technical assistance and flexibility but could improve in responsiveness and communication.
There is enough documentation available, and the community support is good.
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
Forums and community resources like Stack Overflow are helpful.
Team Lead, Data Engineering at Nesine.com
I would give ten points to the technical support from Software AG for ARIS BPA product, from zero to ten, with ten being the best.
Consultant at KAFD DMC
The consultants are fine, however, reliance on single experts for modules can be risky.
Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Apache Airflow is scalable and flexible, ideal for adaptable workflows but may pose challenges in cloud-native integration and large-scale tasks.
Sentiment score
7.6
ARIS BPA is scalable for small to large enterprises, offering flexibility, modular features, and easy licensing for process management expansion.
The solution is very scalable.
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
Apache Airflow scales well, especially when deployed in Kubernetes environments.
Team Lead, Data Engineering at Nesine.com
For user scalability, it is a matter of licenses, while functional scalability is supported and easy to implement.
Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
ARIS BPA has high scalability and wide scalability for any enterprise or organization.
Enterprise Architect at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Egypt
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Apache Airflow's stability is praised, though some face bugs, configuration issues, and performance challenges, especially in cloud environments.
Sentiment score
7.2
ARIS BPA is generally stable, with minor issues primarily in large environments, but responsive support enhances stability perception.
I would rate the stability of the solution as ten out of ten.
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
Apache Airflow is stable and I have not experienced significant issues.
Team Lead, Data Engineering at Nesine.com
I would rate its stability at nine out of ten.
Head of Data at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
The stability of ARIS BPM is quite strong, rated eight out of ten.
Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
We do experience a lot of glitches with ARIS BPA.
Consultant at KAFD DMC
 

Room For Improvement

Apache Airflow needs improvements in flexibility, UI, documentation, scalability, performance, integration, and version control for better workflow orchestration.
ARIS BPA needs better integration, user interface, scripting, documentation, training, pricing, and simplicity for wider accessibility.
It is not suitable for real-time ETL tasks.
Team Lead, Data Engineering at Nesine.com
There is no dashboard for us to check all the Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs); a dashboard would help us analyze the work better.
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
If we desire to add custom messengers or a rest API, those options are unavailable.
Head of Data at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
Software AG should focus on developing AI models for ARIS BPA on-premises, particularly in user interfaces, as well as creating predefined business processes for common areas such as HR and finance.
Software Engineering & Manager at Arab Infromation Management Services
Software AG could improve this by making the database more open.
Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
ARIS BPA needs to be more accurate when generating documents.
Enterprise Architect at Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Egypt
 

Setup Cost

Apache Airflow is free, but enterprises may incur costs using cloud services or managed services for additional features.
ARIS BPA pricing is high but valued by large enterprises; smaller firms may find costs prohibitive due to complex licensing.
I prefer using the open-source version rather than the enterprise version, which helps manage costs.
Team Lead, Data Engineering at Nesine.com
It is a sub-feature and not an individual purchase.
Head of Data at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
Apache Airflow is a community-based platform and is not a licensed product.
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
ARIS BPA does save a lot of effort because this is one tool which can be used for multiple purposes and the viewers have the capability to perform different kinds of analysis, extract reports, and see processes.
Consultant at KAFD DMC
 

Valuable Features

Apache Airflow offers customizable, scalable workflows with Python support, seamless integration, and strong community backing for efficiency and maintainability.
ARIS BPA offers powerful modeling, customization, and collaboration tools, integrating SAP and databases, ensuring strategic alignment and governance.
Apache Airflow is an open-source platform that allows easy integration with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.
Sr. Team Lead - IT at InfoStretch
Reliability is good, and when integrated with Kubernetes, it performs better compared to on-premises environments.
Team Lead, Data Engineering at Nesine.com
We can create notifications for successful or failed tasks, providing a practical way to monitor our workflows.
Head of Data at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
ARIS BPA is a tool to build models and frameworks for organizations or reengineer business processes from both functional and business perspectives.
Software Engineering & Manager at Arab Infromation Management Services
Everything related to ARIS BPA is helping us with regards to enhanced processes, strengthened controls, identifying risks, assessing process capabilities, and identifying where the gaps are and what kinds of activities within the processes are automated and manual.
Consultant at KAFD DMC
The maintenance capabilities of ARIS BPM and the strong underlying database are particularly valuable.
Consultant at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Apache Airflow
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
ARIS BPA
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Apache Airflow is 3.5%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ARIS BPA is 3.1%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Apache Airflow3.5%
ARIS BPA3.1%
Other93.4%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Madhan Potluri - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Data at a energy/utilities company with 51-200 employees
We efficiently manage and monitor production pipelines through job resumption and error log integration
We utilize Apache Airflow for managing machine learning production pipelines. The deployment of our machine learning models takes place through Apache Airflow. We configure pipelines, decide on the frequency of recalibration, deployment, and dataset training Apache Airflow allows us to resume…
BM
Consultant at KAFD DMC
Has improved process modeling and analysis while supporting integration with organizational data
The process design in ARIS BPA does help with our operational efficiency. What we are doing is object library management for various kinds of objects that we are using in ARIS BPA during our process modeling. We are using that to do a lot of analysis on how many times a system is being used in how many processes, who are the major stakeholders, and if we enhance one system, how is it going to impact other processes and integrated processes. This is helping us a lot. Everything related to ARIS BPA is helping us with regards to enhanced processes, strengthened controls, identifying risks, assessing process capabilities, and identifying where the gaps are and what kinds of activities within the processes are automated and manual. We are doing a lot of things with regards to the processes as it is at our heart. Processes are one thing and then we have different kinds of things which are related to it, such as SLAs, guidelines, and policy. We are identifying areas of improvement in other documents as well.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business Process Management (BPM) solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise47
 

Questions from the Community

Which would you choose - Camunda Platform or Apache Airflow?
Camunda Platform allows for visual demonstration and presentation of business process flows. The flexible Java-based option was a big win for us and allows for the integration of microservices very...
What do you like most about Apache Airflow?
Apache Airflow is easy to use and can monitor task execution easily. For instance, when performing setup tasks, you can conveniently view the logs without delving into the job details.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache Airflow?
We don't experience issues with pricing as Apache Airflow is part of a larger platform. It is a sub-feature and not an individual purchase.
What do you like most about ARIS BPA?
The most valuable features of ARIS BPA are its flexibility and reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ARIS BPA?
It is a bit expensive regarding ARIS BPA. However, ARIS BPA does save a lot of effort because this is one tool which can be used for multiple purposes and the viewers have the capability to perform...
What needs improvement with ARIS BPA?
We are not using any what-if scenario features in ARIS BPA. Currently, we are not using the performance monitoring and compliance checks features in ARIS BPA. We have plans to use them, but current...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Airflow
ARIS, ARIS BPM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Agari, WePay, Astronomer
Tesco, Weifu, Airbus, Siemens, Proximus, Alicorp, Sekerbank, Bancor, Philips,Sky, Emirates NBD, Dubai Municipality, Suva, U.S. Army, Australia Post, Westfalen Weser Energie - ARIS serves customers across all industries and of every size worldwide. Companies trust ARIS as the market leader for process excellence with more than 30 years of experience in the market, 10 million users worldwide, from 1 user companies to the Fortune 500.
Find out what your peers are saying about ARIS BPA vs. Apache Airflow and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.