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AWS Step Functions vs Astro by Astronomer 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.3
JAMS enhances efficiency, reducing IT labor and costs, optimizing resources, and allowing focus on critical tasks, despite licensing costs.
Sentiment score
3.3
Astro by Astronomer boosts productivity and reduces costs by optimizing resources, enhancing efficiency, and lowering infrastructure expenses.
Sentiment score
6.3
AWS Step Functions reduce development time and costs, enhance scalability and reliability, streamline workflows, and improve ROI.
The design of JAMS makes it very easy to copy jobs and make minimal changes while ensuring functionality.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
The cost has definitely gone up tremendously.
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
It saved IT time by 50%.
Vice President, Information Technology at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
I am still working with the same number of employees, but the deliverables, quality, and development lifecycle have become shorter.
Manager, Project Development at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The return on investment has been remarkable, with savings exceeding seventy-five percent compared to previous manual cron job management.
MLOps | Senior Data Engineer at Walmart Global Tech India
Now, currently, after Astro by Astronomer, we could manage it for probably one thousand five hundred to one thousand eight hundred dollars per month.
Data Platform Engineer at Babbel
We can get a high-level overview of what we want to design quickly and then implement it via code using Python and deploy it via infrastructure as code using CDK or Terraform.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
JAMS is praised for its quick, knowledgeable customer service, offering proactive support with effective solutions like code examples.
Sentiment score
4.8
Astro by Astronomer provides effective support and education, with fast responses and a user-friendly platform minimizing direct assistance need.
Sentiment score
6.2
AWS Step Functions support is reliable and effective, with prompt resolutions, but responsiveness varies by company size and support level.
Their response is prompt, exemplifying how support should be.
Manager of Reliability Engineering and Security Operations at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
They are very quick to respond depending on the issue's severity.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We contacted JAMS vendor, who guided us through the necessary steps, and after following their guidance, everything was resolved.
ETL Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I have some SLA agreements, and more than 95 percent of the time, I have seen those SLAs get met.
Manager, Project Development at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We use Airflow connections variables or have integrated with a secret manager like Azure Key Vault to securely manage credentials.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Additionally, we have a bi-weekly call with the Astro by Astronomer product team where they guide us to the new features.
Data Platform Engineer at Babbel
I use enterprise support, which is excellent, providing responses within fifteen minutes.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
The speed of reply and the content of their responses usually solve the problems that arise.
EPM Practice Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.6
JAMS is scalable, efficiently managing thousands of jobs, adaptable to various environments, and supports seamless infrastructure expansion.
Sentiment score
5.7
Astro by Astronomer ensures seamless scalability with effective workload handling and resource adjustment through Celery and Kubernetes integration.
Sentiment score
7.1
AWS Step Functions is praised for automatic scalability, efficiently handling diverse workloads and adapting to varying demands.
Those are situations where it has helped us to just say that we don't really care in which tech stack that we are in, whether it's latest or not, but the forward as well as the backward compatibility has been of great help.
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
We might be underutilizing it, but as more jobs require processing, additional servers would be necessary.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
JAMS's scalability is noteworthy; we run 6,000 jobs per day without facing any problems.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
The scalability of Astro by Astronomer is good and quite easy, and it is maintained as a service by the Astronomer team.
Manager, Project Development at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We do not have to worry about selecting the right worker size, and it is quite scalable.
Data Platform Engineer at Babbel
Since it is a managed Airflow platform, it can scale its underlying worker nodes to support more concurrent DAGs and tasks without requiring us to manually manage infrastructure.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
They can handle multiple simultaneous requests effectively.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
We have workloads that may differ based on incoming data, and we did not face any lag or job failures because of AWS Step Functions.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
There isn't much need for scalability when creating orchestration in AWS Step Functions, which explains the rating of six.
Assistant Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
JAMS is highly reliable and stable, with minimal downtime and infrequent failures, even under heavy execution volumes.
Sentiment score
8.1
Astro by Astronomer is valued for stability, despite challenges with integrations, and has improved reliability in recent versions.
Sentiment score
7.9
AWS Step Functions is rated highly for its stable operation, offering reliable performance without downtime across multiple zones.
We experience periods of major incidents annually due to capacity constraints, which result in job failures.
Manager of Reliability Engineering and Security Operations at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
Being on the new version, there's been zero downtime.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
When the servers are under high load, it can take more than one day sometimes.
Internship (Engineer) at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
When we migrated to Astro by Astronomer, those were some of the challenges that we had to overcome.
Data Platform Engineer at Babbel
In my experience, we did not face any major outages caused by Astro by Astronomer itself.
Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
In my experience, Astro by Astronomer has been stable, especially with the recent version, which has resolved issues that were present in earlier versions.
Data Engineer at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
If one zone fails, others handle the demand, ensuring high availability.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
I never faced any faults or issues due to its stability with AWS, making it very reliable with no downtime and 100% reliability.
Assistant Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

JAMS users seek an intuitive UI, enhanced search, better documentation, integrations, monitoring, performance, and clearer deletion dependencies.
Users seek improvements in cost, UI, integration, debugging, multi-tenancy, AI, navigation, and installation for Astro by Astronomer.
Users seek AWS Step Functions improvements in payload size, IDE integration, licensing, visibility, pricing, data transformation, and fault tolerance.
Another area for improvement would be the addition of source control for jobs internally, as this feature would solve several problems for me.
Manager of Reliability Engineering and Security Operations at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees
A major improvement would be the integration of AI to help us accomplish various tasks.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
If around 5,000 or more jobs run at a time, JAMS slows down, and we have to wait around five to 10 minutes or restart JAMS scheduler services.
ETL Data Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
I think Astro by Astronomer could improve its pricing, as it is really expensive, especially if you want to have large use in a large-scale enterprise edition, which requires you to create a VPC hosted instance that significantly increases expenses.
Data Engineer at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
The infrastructure is simpler without Kubernetes dependency.
Data Scientist at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
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.
Systems Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Do not stack up in the same page view; rather keep it upside down, in a horizontal manner, or allow us to scroll through it.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
There is room for improvement in terms of integration with other products.
EPM Practice Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

JAMS offers competitive pricing, flexible licensing, and value despite recent price changes from Fortra's acquisition, outperforming alternatives.
Enterprise users find Astro's pricing high, but appreciate zero downtime despite the need for more flexible options.
AWS Step Functions pricing is flexible and cost-effective but complex, with costs mainly tied to workflows and executions.
The price is fair considering the functionality and importance of the tool, although the increase did unsettle our management.
System Engineer at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
My thoughts on the pricing of JAMS are that I won't say it is cheap, but it is cost-efficient, and that should be acceptable.
Consultant at HCLSoftware
The pricing and licensing were fair.
Database Analyst / Architect at a healthcare company with 1,001-5,000 employees
I think it would be beneficial if pricing were more flexible based on organizational workloads and offered dynamic pricing options.
Manager, Project Development at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Astro by Astronomer seems to have zero downtime, which used to be around 40 minutes when doing an MWAA deployment.
Data Platform Engineer at Babbel
I have no issues with Astro by Astronomer regarding setup costs or security capabilities.
Data Engineer at a non-profit with 1-10 employees
The orchestration service for us is basically free.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Pricing for Step Functions is very cheap.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
The cost is average, provided it is configured correctly.
Big Data Architect at SoftServe Ltd.
 

Valuable Features

JAMS enhances workflow efficiency with flexible scheduling, robust automation, seamless integration, and comprehensive management, optimizing resources and operations.
Astro by Astronomer enhances productivity with its user-friendly UI, seamless CI/CD, and efficient Airflow management for teams.
AWS Step Functions provide service integration, visual workflows, and task parallelization, improving process automation and error management.
JAMS has positively impacted my organization by completely removing the headache of scheduling jobs, not just for the organization but for all internal operations teams need.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 501-1,000 employees
JAMS helps centralize the management of jobs on all of my platforms and applications, which has helped my organization significantly.
Consultant at HCLSoftware
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.
Principal Data Base And Infrastructure Engineer at a outsourcing company with 501-1,000 employees
I value the scalability because my tasks have more than 500 jobs running, and automatic scaling handles increased workloads without requiring manual infrastructure changes.
Manager, Project Development at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The migration capabilities save huge amounts of time and effort. This will not be a small win; it will be a massive win.
Data & AI Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
I have seen improvements in response times and error reduction since using Astro by Astronomer.
Ingeniero En Machine Learning at a media company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It is a main orchestration tool for us and helps us save costs.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AWS Step Functions offers advanced workflows that save time and enhance efficiency by reducing delays and ensuring consistent orchestration among various services.
Big Data Architect at SoftServe Ltd.
Step Functions provide seamless integration with AWS services, which enhances the speed of application development.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
 

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
AWS Step Functions
Ranking in Workload Automation
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (11th)
 

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 AWS Step Functions is 2.0%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Workload Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
JAMS3.1%
Astro by Astronomer1.4%
AWS Step Functions2.0%
Other93.5%
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.
YM
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Central orchestration has streamlined complex data workflows and now drives timely aviation alerts
The best features AWS Step Functions offers include the ability to deploy it via code. It helps us orchestrate anything that we want. Even if we have Glue jobs for another use case or Lambda that we are currently looking forward to, we are using Lambda to take DynamoDB data for real-time sales monitoring, then it goes to our S3 bucket. We have multiple workflows that are orchestrated by AWS Step Functions, and at the core, the main functionality is based on different frameworks. We have an Athena complete workflow, Glue job-based workflow, and a separate Lambda-based workflow. All of these are separately handled in AWS Step Functions. This is a good point and again with the inbuilt facilities of it, including how we can construct those workflows and add up a catch state or roll back or do multiple iterations using the Map state, that is very helpful for us.The Map state feature has specifically helped my team create a rollback state of the data since we were dropping some of our data assets. In case we want them back, we just wanted to do this. We took a particular layer and provided the data list, including the tables list, and using the Map state, we iterated over this list and one by one we did the backups of this data at the concurrency of five tables in a single execution. The Catch state, on the other hand, allows us to identify any error immediately. If we encounter an error, the Catch state immediately picks it up and we integrated webhooks or email notifications. That is how we are able to identify immediately if we face any error. At the core of our data engineering platform, AWS Step Functions sit at the topmost core of whatever pipelines we have. It is a main orchestration tool for us and helps us save costs. It is a key component of our engineering platform.
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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
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Insurance Company
6%
 

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 Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
 

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...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Step Functions?
My main use case for AWS Step Functions is in our data platform where we are trying to generate alerts. For generatin...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Step Functions?
I rate AWS Step Functions a nine out of ten on a scale of one to ten. I chose a nine out of ten because it is basical...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Step Functions?
AWS Step Functions helps us save costs as it is a self-managed service and is serverless. We look out for the inbuilt...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions
 

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
Alpha Apps, The Guardian, SGK, Bigfinite
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Step Functions vs. Astro by Astronomer and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,153 professionals have used our research since 2012.