Hello, I am evaluating whether to use Airflow or Prefect for a side project that includes extracting data from a API and loading them in Snowflake. My understanding is if I use Airflow, I need to use the cloud vendor such as AWS MWAA, which would incur some cost. In comparison, using the Prefect cloud to start out is free. Is my understanding correct? Thank you!

Hi @LI LIU, you are right that Prefect has a very generous free tier. There is a big difference though in that with AWS MWAA, the server that orchestrates is also responsible for running the code. In Prefect, the execution happens on your infrastructure. You are paying per task orchestrated. So you still need to spin up a VM to run the work. Does that make sense?

Makes sense. What VM options are recommended?

That is dependent on whatever you need (how powerful) to run your Flow, but any cloudprovider will work, or even if you have a machine that is always on, that will also work.

For Airflow, you don't have to use a cloud vendor's service, but then you have to setup up Airflow yourself which is cumbersome. If it is for a side-project, getting started with Prefect is super easy.

@LI LIU I would definitely recommend Prefect over MWAA, I'm obviously biased but MWAA is expensive, especially for a side project, I remember having to pay over $60 just for a NAT Gateway that for some reason AWS doesn't remove when you remove your MWAA instance 🤦‍♀️ And here are some ideas for Prefect agents as a hobbyist: https://discourse.prefect.io/t/what-type-of-agent-can-i-set-up-quickly-to-execute-flow-runs-on-a-remote-machine-e-g-public-cloud/122/2?u=anna_geller