Open-source workflow automation: which tool to pick

Six tools can run your automations on your own server, and they start from different places. n8n and Activepieces connect apps to each other the way Zapier does. Activepieces publishes its core under MIT, while n8n's licence forbids hosting it for clients to build their own workflows, and n8n doesn't call itself open source. Dify builds agents and RAG chatbots in a web console, and its licence makes multi-tenant use subject to the vendor's permission. Flowise covered the same ground until its team archived the repository in August 2026 and ended all support on 31 August; no released version fixes the six security advisories, two of them critical, published on 10 September. Paperclip builds no agents at all: it hands tickets to agents you already run, such as Claude Code or Codex. ToolJet builds internal tools, and its workflows are not part of its AGPL code.

Service workflows, LLM apps or internal tools: three families

A service-to-service workflow tool starts from a trigger (a webhook, a schedule, an event in some app) and runs a chain of steps that call other services. n8n's README claims more than 1,500 integrations. In Activepieces, each connector is called a piece and ships as an npm package written in TypeScript, and the README credits the community with 60% of them. If what you want is a Zapier alternative you can host, these are the two that pitch themselves that way. Activepieces calls itself "an open source replacement for Zapier". n8n bills per full workflow execution, however many steps it has, and sets that against Zapier counting tasks; Activepieces also charges one credit per execution. Both add AI, with agent nodes built on LangChain in n8n and agents in Activepieces, though not in its Community edition.

An LLM app builder wires models, documents and tools together. Dify publishes each app, whether a chatbot, an agent or a workflow, with its own API, handles RAG from document upload to retrieval, and since 1.10 can start a workflow on a schedule, a webhook or an event delivered by a plugin. Flowise wires LangChain and LlamaIndex nodes on a canvas and serves each flow on its own API endpoint. Paperclip stands apart: its README says it is "not an agent framework" and "not just a workflow builder". It places agents you already run in an org chart, assigns them tickets within a budget, and fires routines on cron, a webhook or an API call. Its docs list nine adapters as stable, Claude Code, Codex and Gemini CLI among them, and the README is written for people steering several agents toward one goal.

An internal tool starts from the screen. ToolJet builds admin panels and dashboards by drag and drop, on top of more than 90 data sources. Its workflows back the app up, triggered by a button, a webhook or a schedule.

What each tool needs to run

Read from the repositories and documentation on 7 October 2026.

n8n and Flowise start on SQLite and move to PostgreSQL and Redis as load grows. n8n's queue mode hands executions to workers through Redis; the docs don't support it on SQLite, and in that mode they send binary files to S3 storage, which the Community edition doesn't include. Activepieces starts with four containers (app, worker, PostgreSQL, Redis) and, for production, plans one worker at 0.5 vCPU and 1 GB per flow running in parallel, with S3 storage required: at 50 concurrent flows, the workers alone take 25 vCPU and 50 GB. Dify brings up fifteen containers on startup, including PostgreSQL, Redis, Weaviate, two Squid proxies that guard against SSRF and two execution sandboxes.

ToolJet runs only on 64-bit x86, with no arm64 support, and executes workflows only on an instance started with WORKER=true; a run stops after 60 seconds by default. Paperclip fits in one Node.js 24.11 process with an embedded PostgreSQL, but you bring the agents: each adapter expects its tool's CLI to be installed, along with the API keys or subscription behind it. Its default local_trusted mode asks for no sign-in, and remote access goes through authenticated mode. Activepieces and Paperclip both turn telemetry on by default, and both let you switch it off.

Licences: what n8n and Dify forbid, what the others hold back

n8n calls itself "fair-code", and its own docs decline the open source label. The Sustainable Use License, adopted on 17 March 2022 in place of Apache 2.0 with the Commons Clause, limits use to a company's internal business purposes or to personal, non-commercial use. Its FAQ draws the line. You may build automations for clients on your own instance, as long as they can't create or edit the workflows. You may not host n8n so that clients build their own, let your product's users configure workflows (through your UI, the API, MCP or an AI agent) or white-label it, and embedding its interface in a product takes an OEM agreement.

Dify's licence starts from Apache 2.0 and adds two conditions in its LICENSE file. Running a multi-tenant environment, where one tenant equals one workspace, takes written permission from the publisher, LangGenius. Anyone using the web console may not remove or alter Dify's logo and copyright notices. Commercial use is allowed, including as the backend for other applications, and contributors agree that the publisher can make the licence stricter or looser.

Activepieces, Flowise, ToolJet and Paperclip publish their code under recognised open-source licences, but the first three keep part of it aside. Activepieces is MIT except for two ee directories, and Flowise is Apache-2.0 except for its enterprise directory, which holds SSO and roles: those directories need a subscription in production. ToolJet is under AGPL-3.0, so a modified version run as a network service has to publish its source. Yet its README files workflows under the Enterprise edition, whose code lives in two Git submodules the public can't reach, and in the Community Edition every service in the workflows module throws "Method not implemented.". Paperclip is MIT, with no directory set aside for a paid edition.

What the free edition leaves out

The five tools with a commercial offer all keep SSO, at least in part, for paying customers. n8n puts it, along with LDAP and Git version control, in its Business plan, self-hosted only, at €667 a month billed annually for 40,000 executions; its Community edition also lacks workflow sharing and projects. Activepieces puts SSO and standard roles in its Team plan, at $200 a month for 25 users, and SCIM, Git Sync and audit logs in the Ultimate plan, priced on request. Dify limits its Community edition to a single workspace, and sells SSO, fine-grained RBAC, audit logs and an official Helm chart in a self-hosted Enterprise edition, priced on request. ToolJet caps its free self-hosted plan at two builders, 50 end users and 10 apps, with SSO limited to Google and GitHub; OIDC, LDAP, SAML, RBAC and GitSync start with the Team plan, at $199 per builder per month. Flowise's docs keep SSO for the Enterprise plan, and on 7 October 2026 flowiseai.com still listed cloud plans at $35 and $65 a month, with no word on what happens to them.

Activepieces' Community edition also turns off agents and the AI chat, and gives each user a single personal project. Its pricing FAQ calls it "the automation core on its own" and says paying adds what you need "once more than a couple of people depend on it". Activepieces' recommended installer and ToolJet's Docker guide both set up the Enterprise edition, which runs on the free plan without a key. With Activepieces, a hand-built Docker Compose setup without AP_EDITION=ee gives you the Community edition, and the docs warn that no key can be activated on it later. With ToolJet, the free self-hosted plan includes the workflow builder that the repository's AGPL code doesn't contain.

Paperclip has no paid plan: Paperclip Cloud sits behind a waitlist with no published pricing, and self-hosting needs no Paperclip account.

Where the projects stand

Flowise is no longer maintained. According to the end-of-life announcement, the team froze the code on 29 July 2026, the day 3.1.4 shipped, archived the repository in August and left Discord and GitHub on 31 August; Workday had acquired Flowise in August 2025. On 10 September 2026, six security advisories, two of them critical and tied to SSO login, were published against every version up to 3.1.4, and no released version fixes them. The repository no longer accepts reports.

Activepieces has never shipped a 1.0 since its repository was created in December 2022. Version 0.92.2 came out on 7 October 2026, and the Breaking Changes page in its docs lists 18 affected versions between 0.75.0 on 2 January and 0.91.0 on 14 September 2026. n8n ships a minor version almost every week, from 2.0.0 on 8 December 2025 to 2.43.0 on 6 October 2026, through two Docker channels, beta and stable, and still patches its 1.x line. Dify has published twenty-three stable releases in twelve months; its 1.17.1 of 10 September 2026 moves the bundled Weaviate from 1.27.0 to 1.39.2, an upgrade existing installs must run by hand, in stages, or risk breaking vector search. ToolJet patches its 3.20 LTS line several times a week, with 17 releases between 7 September and 7 October 2026, and promises a new LTS every three to five months, supported for at least 18 months.

Paperclip is the youngest. Its repository dates from 2 March 2026, 28 releases have shipped through 6 October, and the latest brings three breaking changes and ten database migrations. It has about 98,000 stars, but also 2,812 open issues and 3,393 open pull requests, against 2,895 merged.