Dagster
Asset-centric data orchestration: define data, not tasks.
About
Dagster is the data-orchestration platform built around software-defined assets: declare the data products you want (tables, models, files) and Dagster figures out the dependency graph, scheduling, and freshness — with lineage, data quality checks, and a polished UI. 16.3k stars, Apache-2.0, 7.9M PyPI downloads/month. The asset model is a genuine improvement over task-DAGs for data teams, though it requires a mindset shift. Dagster Cloud is the commercial offering; the OSS core is fully capable self-hosted.
What it can do
- **Software-defined assets**: declare data, not tasks
- **Lineage**: automatic dependency graphs and data lineage
- **Freshness & checks**: SLAs and data-quality monitoring
- **Declarative scheduling**: cron, sensors, and event triggers
- **dbt integration**: first-class dbt project support
Setup
```bash
pip install dagster dagster-webserver
dagster dev # local UI + code server
```
```python
import dagster as dg
@dg.asset
def raw_orders(): return [...]
@dg.asset(deps=[raw_orders])
def clean_orders(): ...
```
Docs: docs.dagster.io.
Prerequisites
Python 3.9+. Dagster OSS (dagster dev) or Dagster Cloud.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 9/10
Scored 9/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: 16,267 GitHub stars (log-scaled vs catalog peers); blended with ~7,886,605 monthly package downloads; last push 0d ago; 51 releases/12mo; 2581 open issues. Manual review: asset-centric data orchestration, 16.3k stars, 7.9M PyPI/mo; asset model is a mindset shift; Cloud is the monetization path. License: Apache-2.0.
★ 16,267 GitHub stars
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 8.5/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 8.2/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 10.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 9.0/10
- · 16,267 GitHub stars (log-scaled vs catalog peers)
- · blended with ~7,886,605 monthly package downloads
- · last push 0d ago; 51 releases/12mo; 2581 open issues
- · manual review: asset-centric data orchestration, 16.3k stars, 7.9M PyPI/mo; asset model is a mindset shift; Cloud is the monetization path
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.