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Astro by Astronomer vs AutoSys Workload Automation comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 18, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

JAMS
Sponsored
Ranking in Workload Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Astro by Astronomer
Ranking in Workload Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
AutoSys Workload Automation
Ranking in Workload Automation
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Workload Automation category, the mindshare of JAMS is 3.1%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Astro by Astronomer is 1.4%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AutoSys Workload Automation is 6.6%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS3.1%
AutoSys Workload Automation6.6%
Astro by Astronomer1.4%
Other88.9%
Workload Automation
 

Featured Reviews

LV
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
Automation has replaced nightly monitoring and delivers reliable, unified job scheduling
We have really enjoyed working with JAMS in terms of notifications, alerts, and streamlining. There used to be a process with Automate, which is another product from Fortra, but even before that, the other division of the company that we were merging with had a tool that was built in-house called a file handler or file distributor. It was an in-house developed tool, but it was not as streamlined or as efficient as JAMS is. We literally had to have a dedicated nighttime person monitoring. Although we are 24/7, the divisions of the company that we were using JAMS for have been small scale. While we have automated it, we have streamlined it in such a way that notifications go out and alerts go out, but if there is anything, then we get paged and alerted, and if anything needs to happen at midnight, we can wake up. On the other hand, with the tool I mentioned, the file handler and distributor, we used to have a dedicated nighttime person that had to be sitting and monitoring it to see when a file arrived, whether it met the conditions, and then execute the next particular job. By using JAMS, we have gained a lot more efficiencies in terms of all of those to streamline it, and there is no necessary need for having an overnight engineer just keeping an eye on all of this.
FS
Data Platform Engineer at Babbel
Unified orchestration has reduced costs and improves governance for complex data workflows
I would say it would be much more helpful if Astro by Astronomer can provide an MCP to use and integrate with Astro by Astronomer and their AI agent Auto, so that we can use our tools like Claude, Code, or Cursor to have a central location where we integrate that MCP in Databricks via the AI gateway, and then we can have a place where we can connect to Astro by Astronomer, Databricks, other tools such as Jira and DataDog, and then have a much more comprehensive analysis and overview and monitoring of the entire data ecosystem. Having an MCP integration would tremendously help us to have a more comprehensive data platform that is more AI-ready. That is one of the features that I can think of. Another thought would be having an integration with Kubernetes instead of just scheduling everything on Astro by Astronomer workers. That would be helpful. One thing I can think of is that the Astro by Astronomer local developer environment can be improved further, but perhaps that is a very niche use case that I have in mind, and it may not be useful for others. There is room for improvement around having an improved UI and also integration with other tools. On governance, I would say we can have a more granular level of governance even inside workspaces. Having much more granular control over people belonging to the same team in Astro by Astronomer could have different access to different DAGs, depending upon our tagging strategy. That is one of the areas I can suggest in terms of improvement. The AI capabilities can be improved further. I would compare the current AI capabilities to newer models provided by Claude such as Opus or Codex.
PK
Assistant VP at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Experience significant automation with robust integration and user-friendly interfaces
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancements in the R24 release. The web UI needs some improvement. Cloud integrations are limited to 25 or 30 configurable plugins and integrations to the cloud. They can improve in that area. They have separate tools, not AutoSys Workload Automation, such as Atomic and other SaaS-based solutions that can run inside the cloud. AutoSys Workload Automation can be configured in the cloud, but it requires a substantial number of VMs depending on the load. For on-premises deployment, it is a very good solution. They need to increase their footprint in the cloud and improve the web UI. They are making excellent progress in the R24 release.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"JAMS has improved our productivity immensely because everything flows. I don't think we could operate at our current staffing levels without it."
"The scheduling and execution of jobs are the most valuable features. The scheduling is important because if there is a task we want to execute at 4:00 AM, there's no way we will have someone who can manually run the job. In addition, we execute 100 to 200 jobs per day, and manual intervention is not an option."
"We can see all the batch execution status within the tool itself, which saves money, time, and cost, allowing us to handle everything in one single tool."
"The interface is good, and it's very easy to define and create jobs. If a job is not running or there is an error, the solution will send an email. That's all very good and very useful."
"I didn't know about JAMS because I don't have a person with any challenges with the purchase administration. The feature or the user interface is user-friendly because of the readable icons or very descriptive icons. Though I'm a beginning user of JAMS, I had no issues using it."
"We also use the solution’s Interactive Agents. If we need to push something to our dealer portal, we can just drop a file in a folder and it goes. Running interactive tasks helps me users focus on business processes since I don’t have to take care of running the jobs manually."
"Getting JAMS in place was a game changer for us back then."
"JAMS has been a beneficial monitoring tool for our project in terms of being able to deliver data that is essential for users."
"Astro by Astronomer has positively impacted my organization by automating ingestion pipelines, transformations, and error handling, and it has given us relief."
"The best features Astro by Astronomer offers, in my opinion, are easy setup and good tutorials."
"The return on investment has been remarkable, with savings exceeding seventy-five percent compared to previous manual cron job management."
"I saved a significant amount of time compared to my previous setup as I deployed Astro by Astronomer on my local machine in about five minutes, whereas with the Airflow documentation it took much more time and was very painful compared to the Astro by Astronomer deployment."
"The best features Astro by Astronomer offers include a large operator and library that I can work with for different use cases."
"Astro by Astronomer has positively impacted my organization because I can create more data pipelines to integrate into my medallion architecture, making it easy to do data engineering jobs."
"I would definitely say the migration capabilities save huge amounts of time and effort."
"Astro by Astronomer has many integrations out of the box, making it easy to use and to access documentation."
"The features that I have found most valuable with AutoSys are that it is scalable, easy to use, fast, and always available. That's very important because if it's not steady then it's a real problem. So, at this point, we are satisfied with it."
"Virtual machine usage: It helped us to schedule the job to run on multiple servers based on the workload."
"Without this product we would have to manually submit jobs and it would take longer. There would also be a much greater possibility of jobs running wrong and/or not at the right time."
"The customized views that each individual can create, and views that can be made free-form, makes this very popular with the programmers."
"After we started using CA Workload Automation, everything became one integrated system and it makes the troubleshooting and monitoring much easier."
"The really nice thing is that, as the business grows, we're not seeing the infrastructure grow."
"The most valuable feature of AutoSys Workload Automation is user-friendliness. If someone has some knowledge of the tool they can use it."
"The initial setup is easy."
 

Cons

"We have had a lot of people working from home who can't always connect to the JAMS server. We use VPN, as most companies do, and we have it set up so that everybody can access the JAMS server. But many times, our people cannot access it... JAMS could do a better job of telling you what the problem is when you try to log in to the server."
"The tabs in the JAMS file transfer could be clearer. It would help us demonstrate to our client that JAMS not only automates jobs but also does fast transfers, and it's an alternative that supports and filters different kinds of platforms. Filtering file transfers will be highly beneficial to them."
"I want JAMS to implement a global search function."
"For scalability, I would rate it as seven because when we have a huge volume, sometimes the tool is not so responsive."
"To improve JAMS, it should resolve the issues with the JD Edwards application and the need for the SSH agent in the current version, which has been a problem for a while."
"JAMS doesn't allow us to implement SOC controls. We are a company that trades stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, so all our transactions are audited. It has a feature that saves the file for only a month but doesn't segregate the data between finance and SOC-related compliance."
"The monitoring of the JAMS product and its performance is an area of concern for me."
"The only thing that they could improve on is the fact that they don't have a browser version of JAMS. They've got all the bits and pieces there if you want to build your own web version of it. It does come with a web client, but it's pretty clunky. They could improve on that."
"After using Astro by Astronomer for four years, I can say it has evolved significantly, which is positive; however, improving the debugging experience for complex workflows remains a pain point."
"I believe one area for improvement for Astro by Astronomer would be to further expand the documentation and examples for more advanced scenarios, especially involving integrations with AWS, Amazon ECS, AWS Fargate, and Astronomer Cosmos."
"Astro by Astronomer can be improved by adding a full library for dates, working, and interfacing with the diagrams."
"I think that one year ago, Astro by Astronomer needed to improve in reliability because it was a bit slow to develop and sometimes it crashed."
"Sometimes we experience performance bottlenecks, depending on the time we are running DAGs simultaneously."
"If I had to think of one area where I see potential for improvement, it would be integration with infrastructure virtualized services like vCenter, Hyper-V, and storage systems like Hitachi and IBM FlashSystem."
"I think there is an aspect of the tool that has caused me some difficulty, which is the scheduler, and I think it could be more intuitive or efficient."
"I believe my experience with pricing, setup, cost, and licensing could be better."
"We would like to see good improvement on the historical reporting capabilities."
"The way that it was brought to us, in our initial setup, we had a lot of initial questions and they replied, "Well, set it up the way you want it." It was kind of confusing from an end-user support aspect, asking them what are the best practices."
"AutoSys Workload Automation could improve the integration."
"There is always something that can be improved, but I do like this product."
"It needs more complex scheduling capabilities on the end points."
"I think the interface could be unified in a better way."
"We had one time when we did an upgrade, which did not go smoothly. I remember clearly that we had about 53 open tickets with CA in one week."
"We've had stability problems with the tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Fortra's JAMS pricing structure has deteriorated significantly since its acquisition by Fortra."
"I haven't been involved in the financial side for several years, but we buy one host and unlimited agents, and we get a reasonable price for that. We're happy with the amount we pay and the scalability it provides."
"Take advantage of its scalability. You can start small. The initial cost is very reasonable. Once you have started picking up the tool and adopting it, then you can scale up from there and buy more agents."
"Our licensing is pretty cheap because we have a state solution. So, we pay only $1,000 a year."
"The pricing is very fair. We have seen very minimal to no price increases over the years. We are not banging down the door of support all the time either. I would imagine if we were a company that submitted a dozen support tickets a week for the last nine years, then it might be a little different because we would be eating up everybody's time. However, for what we get out of it, the pricing is extremely fair. Back when we were originally looking and brought in JAMS, we were looking at a couple of the other competitive products that were in this space, but the pricing from JAMS was far and away better than what the other competitors could offer for the same functionality."
"The product is reasonably priced, and we don't have any add-ons."
"The licensing model for JAMS is straightforward and based on the number of agents, not the number of jobs you run. It's cheap and fairly simple."
"It was $10,000 for the first year. Then, there is a maintenance cost for licensing every year that we get billed $5,000 for every year."
Information not available
"I certainly think the pricing is worth the value."
"CA pricing has been a problem, and not looked upon favorably here at all."
"It is overpriced."
"There is an annual license to use AutoSys Workload Automation."
"The price of this solution is reasonable and there is an annual license required."
"The return on investment would be very high because doing things manually without this product would be extremely expensive."
"We paid to use the solution monthly."
"The pricing needs to be improved. Some of my client's complained that it was too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Outsourcing Company
14%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise23
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise79
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for JAMS?
I was not really involved in the pricing, setup cost, and licensing at that level. I am more involved in the technica...
What needs improvement with JAMS?
To improve JAMS, it should resolve the issues with the JD Edwards application and the need for the SSH client connect...
What is your primary use case for JAMS?
My main use case for JAMS is to install, set up, and configure for customers working with JD Edwards application. A s...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Astro by Astronomer?
Whenever there is a deployment, Astro by Astronomer seems to have zero downtime, which used to be around 40 minutes w...
What needs improvement with Astro by Astronomer?
The current version of Astro by Astronomer is good enough for our needs. The documentation part of Astro by Astronome...
What is your primary use case for Astro by Astronomer?
My main use case for Astro by Astronomer is orchestrating the Airflow pipeline without hassling the backend of Airflo...
How does Control-M compare with AutoSys Workload Automation?
Control-M acts as a single, centralized interface for monitoring and managing all batch processes, which is helpful b...
What needs improvement with AutoSys Workload Automation?
There are areas of AutoSys Workload Automation that have room for improvement. They are implementing good enhancement...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
CA Workload Automation, CA Workload Automation AE
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Teradata, Arconic, General Dynamics, Yum!, CVS Health, Comcast, Ghiradelli, & Boston’s Children’s Hospital
Information Not Available
Gaumont, Mercantil do Brasil, CCEE, Hanwha Life
Find out what your peers are saying about Astro by Astronomer vs. AutoSys Workload Automation and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,858 professionals have used our research since 2012.