Amazon SWF vs AWS Step Functions: What are the differences?

Developers describe Amazon SWF as "Automate the coordination, auditing, and scaling of applications across multiple machines". Amazon Simple Workflow allows you to structure the various processing steps in an application that runs across one or more machines as a set of “tasks.” Amazon SWF manages dependencies between the tasks, schedules the tasks for execution, and runs any logic that needs to be executed in parallel. The service also stores the tasks, reliably dispatches them to application components, tracks their progress, and keeps their latest state. On the other hand, AWS Step Functions is detailed as "Build Distributed Applications Using Visual Workflows". AWS Step Functions makes it easy to coordinate the components of distributed applications and microservices using visual workflows. Building applications from individual components that each perform a discrete function lets you scale and change applications quickly.

Amazon SWF and AWS Step Functions belong to "Cloud Task Management" category of the tech stack.