Prefect — Workflow Orchestration Without Boilerplate

Prefect is an orchestration framework focused on simplicity. Add a decorator to a function and you get a workflow with retry, logging, and monitoring.

Prefect — Orchestration for Python Developers¶

Just @flow and @task decorators — no special infrastructure needed.

from prefect import flow, task

@task(retries=3)
def extract(url: str) -> dict:
    import httpx
    return httpx.get(url).json()

@task
def transform(raw: dict) -> list:
    return [{**r, 'czk': r['eur'] * 25.2} for r in raw['data']]

@task
def load(records: list) -> int:
    save_to_db(records)
    return len(records)

@flow(name="Sales Pipeline", log_prints=True)
def pipeline():
    raw = extract("https://api.example.com/sales")
    data = transform(raw)
    print(f"Loaded {load(data)} records")

Orchestrator Comparison¶

• Prefect — easiest to start with, small teams
• Airflow — largest ecosystem, enterprise standard
• Dagster — asset-oriented, data platforms

Summary¶

Prefect is ideal for quickly orchestrating Python workflows without unnecessary complexity.