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Airflow & DAGs · Advanced Development

What is catchup?

Mediumairflow-23
catchupscheduling

Question

What is catchup in Airflow?

Solution

Catchup controls whether Airflow creates missed historical DAG runs.

If start_date = Jan 1, today is Jul 1, schedule is daily:

  • catchup=True → may create many historical runs (Jan 1 … Jun 30)
  • catchup=False → won't automatically create all those historical runs

Use False when historical execution isn't required. Use backfill intentionally when you need history.

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