Activepieces
Open-source AI automation: chat-drafted flows, agents, tables, and 760+ app connections you can self-host.
Activepieces is the best-value pick for AI-native automation if two things are true for you: you want to self-host, and you want governance you can point at during a security review. One credit per run no matter how many steps it contains is genuinely cheap, and the chat-to-flow drafter plus MCP server mean your team can build from Claude or Cursor without learning the canvas. Team at $166/mo billed annually (or $200/mo monthly) buys SSO, 25 seats, and unlimited projects. Compare Zapier, which charges per task and gets expensive at volume, or Make, which is cheaper than Zapier but not open source. The honest caveats: the 760+ app library is smaller than Zapier's, and enterprise controls
Verified 9d ago · liveness 89/100 · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/activepieces
- Platform and ops teams who need to self-host or go air-gapped
- Companies migrating off per-task pricing on Zapier or Make
- Enterprises needing SSO, audit logs streamed to a SIEM, and secret managers
- SaaS products embedding a white-label builder and agents in their own app
- Buyers who need a connector for every niche app — the catalog is 760+ pieces, smaller than Zapier's
- Small teams that need SSO or audit logs but can't move up to Team at $166/mo billed annually
- Organizations that want automation with no AI component at all
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Skip Activepieces if you need a prebuilt connector for a niche or legacy app and won't build one from the HTTP piece or an open-source TypeScript piece.
AI steps cost more than the base run: a fast model is 2 credits, a smart model is 10, and a frontier model is 20, on top of the 1 credit per run — bring your own provider keys on Plus and up to drop every AI step back
Free covers exploration and one lightweight flow. Plus at $16/mo billed annually (or $20/mo monthly) fits a solo builder or a small team of up to 5 who want more credits and their own AI keys. Team at $166/mo billed annually (or $200/mo monthly) is where SSO, 25 seats, and unlimited projects arrive — that's roughly what Make charges a mid-size team and well under what Zapier's task pricing runs at volume. Ultimate is custom-priced for SCIM, audit logs, and dedicated workers.
In short
Activepieces — Open-source AI automation: chat-drafted flows, agents, tables, and 760+ app connections you can self-host. Best for Platform and ops teams who need to self-host or go air-gapped, Companies migrating off per-task pricing on Zapier or Make, Enterprises needing SSO, audit logs streamed to a SIEM, and secret managers. Free to start; paid plans from $16/mo.
What's new in Activepieces
Checked 9 days agoAcross the latest 4 updates: 1 feature update and 3 news mentions.
Vibe automation: Build workflows by describing them in chat
Instead of dragging nodes, you describe the desired workflow in chat, and the agent drafts the steps for you, ensuring auditability.
ClickUp's automation quotas are conversion traps
Argues that ClickUp's quota model traps users, and positions Activepieces' unlimited automations as the alternative.
What Tayo's WhatsApp leads taught us about agents versus chatbots
Case study showing that AI agents outperform chatbots in lead qualification on WhatsApp.
Why your AI agents need human approval gates
Argues that human-in-the-loop is necessary for safe AI agent operations, a core feature of Activepieces.
What people actually say about Activepieces — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
62 mentions across 4 sources (Hacker News, YouTube, Product Hunt, GitHub) · researched Aug 21, 2026.
Average across the 4 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +True open-source license (MIT) allows free use in commercial apps
- +Drag-and-drop builder is praised for being easy and intuitive
- +Active and responsive team; feature requests implemented in a day
- +Very competitive pricing compared to Zapier and n8n
- +AI-first focus with built-in agents and human approval steps
- −Advanced features are gated behind paid tiers, limiting open-source claim
- −Fewer integrations than rivals (700 vs n8n's 1000+)
- −Community edition lacks some power features, pushing users to paid plans
- −Some users find n8n's workflow capabilities more advanced for complex automation
- −No official mention of uptime SLA, raising reliability concerns for enterprise
- • Some advanced features (like certain AI features) are only available on paid plans, which might surprise users who expect all open-source features for free
- • Self-hosting may require infrastructure and maintenance costs that add up
Viability Score
How well maintained and how widely used is Activepieces? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: October 2026
How we score →Key Features
- Chat to automation: describe a workflow in plain words and get a drafted flow
- AI agents with custom instructions, tools, knowledge, and human approval gates
- Drag-and-drop visual flow builder with branching, retries, waitpoints, and subflows
- Error handling with runs that resume from their last checkpoint instead of restarting
- 760+ open-source app connections (pieces) including Gmail, Slack, HubSpot, OpenAI, Notion
- Tables for storing data that both flows and agents can read and write
- MCP server connecting agents to Claude, Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, and Zed
- HTTP piece for any REST or GraphQL API with authentication and pagination
- TypeScript code step for logic the visual builder can't express
- Human approval gates before steps that touch money, customers, or production
- Bring your own AI keys: Anthropic, OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, Google Gemini
- Projects for isolating each team's or client's workspace
- SSO via Okta or Entra with standard and custom roles
- Audit logs streamed to your SIEM in real time
- Secret managers keeping credentials in your own vault (e.g. HashiCorp Vault)
About Activepieces
Activepieces is an open-source automation platform that combines a drag-and-drop flow builder with AI agents, a data store called Tables, and MCP servers so AI clients like Claude, Cursor, and ChatGPT can build from inside their own interface. You describe a job in plain words — the vendor's own example is 'process the invoice in my inbox' — and the agent finds the invoice, matches it against a purchase order, checks the budget, then stops at an approval gate before paying. That approval step is a first-class product feature rather than a workaround: you gate the steps that touch money, customers, or production and let the rest run unattended. Chat, agents, flows, and tables all share the same connection, so an app is authenticated once and every flow, agent, and teammate can reach it. Paid plans add the governance layer — SSO via Okta or Entra, standard and custom roles, audit logs streamed to a SIEM, secret managers such as HashiCorp Vault, and per-project isolation — and all of it runs either on Activepieces Cloud with an EU hosting option in Frankfurt or on your own Docker or Kubernetes infrastructure, including fully air-gapped. Pricing is published on the site: Free at $0 with 100 credits a day, Plus at $20/mo billed monthly or $16/mo billed annually, Team at $200/mo billed monthly or $166/mo billed annually, and Ultimate priced custom with a yearly credit pool. One run costs one credit regardless of step count; AI steps cost extra (2 for a fast model, 10 for a smart model, 20 for a frontier model) unless you bring your own provider keys, which drops them to 1 credit. It fits teams who want AI automation they can audit and host themselves. It fits less well if you need a connector for every niche app — the library is 760+ rather than Zapier's thousands — or if you want automation with no AI component at all.
Behind the Verdict
The interesting thing about Activepieces in 2026 is that the product has stopped being 'open-source Zapier' and become something closer to an agent runtime with a workflow builder attached. The building blocks are explicit in the docs: agents, flows, and tables are peers, and an agent can call a flow while a flow can run an agent while both read and write the same tables. That composability is why the invoice-processing demo holds together — the agent does the reasoning, the flow does the deterministic steps, the table holds the state, and an approval gate sits in front of the payment. Most competitors in this category make you choose between an agent product and a workflow product. Where it earns its keep is cost model and control. Runs resume from their last checkpoint rather than restarting, so a five-step flow that fails at step four doesn't re-run steps one through three and re-bill you for them. A run is one credit however many steps it has, and AI is the exception that costs extra — 2 credits for a fast model, 10 for a smart model, 20 for a frontier model — which you can neutralize entirely by connecting your own Anthropic, OpenAI, AWS Bedrock, or Google Gemini keys on Plus and above, dropping every AI step to 1 credit. On top of that you decide where it runs: Activepieces Cloud, your own Docker or Kubernetes cluster, or fully air-gapped with no outbound network. Add projects that seal each team's space off, secret managers that keep credentials in your own HashiCorp Vault, and audit events streamed to Splunk in real time, and you have something a platform team can actually approve. The weaknesses are real and worth stating plainly. The integration library is 760+ pieces; Zapier and Make still have larger catalogs, though the HTTP piece covers anything with a REST or GraphQL API in the meantime and pieces are open-source TypeScript you or the vendor can extend. The governance tier is steep — SSO and standard roles arrive at Team at $166/mo billed annually, but SCIM, custom RBAC, secret managers, audit logs, event streaming, releases and Git Sync, priority execution, and dedicated workers all sit in Ultimate, which is custom-priced and quoted yearly, and Embed starts at $36k a year. Self-hosting is free and the Community Edition runs the automation core, but the pricing page is candid that paying for the cloud buys Agents and Chat, access control, separation between teams and clients, and support from the vendor rather than a forum. If you are a solo builder or a three-person team, Plus at $16/mo billed annually is generous, but you will not get SSO. And if you are allergic to AI in your tooling, most of the interesting surface here is AI-centric. One detail worth flagging for security reviewers: the pricing FAQ states the SOC 2 program is in progress and the company explicitly declines to claim a certification it does not yet hold. That is a more honest position than most vendors take, and they offer a penetration test summary, DPA,
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Real-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Activepieces actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
Points the invoice agent at the accounts inbox, connects Snowflake for budget checks and QuickBooks for logging, then gates the payment step so nothing leaves without a human approval.
Outcome: Invoice intake runs end to end with an audit trail and one click of human judgment per payment instead of full manual handling.
Deploys Activepieces via Kubernetes with no outbound network, wires SSO to Okta, points the secret manager at the internal HashiCorp Vault, and streams audit events to Splunk.
Outcome: Teams build agents and flows without credentials leaving the vault and without a single outbound connection.
Embeds the builder under their own brand using the SDK, provisions each customer's users from a token, and presets their connections so they never sign in twice.
Outcome: Customers get flows and run history inside the product without the founder building an automation engine from scratch.
Use Cases
- Invoice intake: an agent pulls invoices from the inbox, matches them to a purchase order, checks budget, and asks for payment approval
- Support triage: answer common questions automatically and escalate anything needing a human
- Inbound lead routing: research each demo request, score it, and hand it to an owner within the minute
- Daily report agent that compiles team metrics and posts a summary to Slack
- Access review: draft the review from Claude and track approval before changes ship
- Sync CRM data to Google Sheets and notify on changes
- Gate production changes with a human approval step before deployment
Models Under the Hood
as of 2026-09-22
Limitations
- The app catalog is 760+ pieces, smaller than Zapier's or Make's, though the HTTP piece covers anything with an API and pieces are open-source TypeScript you can extend.
- Governance is tiered: SSO and standard roles start at Team ($166/mo billed annually), while SCIM, custom RBAC, secret managers, audit logs, event streaming, Git Sync releases, priority execution, and dedicated workers require custom-priced Ultimate.
- Agents and Chat are paid capabilities — the free Community Edition is the automation core only.
- Embedding starts at $36k a year.
- The company states its SOC 2 program is in progress and does not claim the certification yet.
- AI-generated workflow drafts and responses can contain mistakes, as the documentation itself notes.
- Self-hosting shifts operational load onto your team.
as of 2026-09-29
Verification history
We have re-verified Activepieces 18 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
- — re-verified summary, description, our verdict, our analysis, pricing model, pricing tiers, features, integrations, who it suits, who should skip it
Showing the 6 most recent of 18 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Plans compared
For each published Activepieces tier: who it actually fits, and what it adds vs. the previous tier. Cross-reference the cost calculator above for projected annual outlay.
Free
$0/mo
Ideal for
Someone evaluating the platform or running one lightweight automation who doesn't need governance features.
What this tier adds
Free entry point: $0 forever, no card, 100 credits a day, unlimited flows, and access to Flows, Agents, Tables, MCPs, and the API.
Plus
$16/mo billed annually ($20/mo billed monthly)
Ideal for
A solo builder or small team of up to 5 running daily automations who want to use their own AI provider keys.
What this tier adds
Adds 10,000 credits a month with no daily cap (then $0.007/credit), up to 5 users, bring-your-own AI keys, and global connections.
Team
$166/mo billed annually ($200/mo billed monthly)
Ideal for
A growing team of up to 25 that needs SSO, standard roles, and unlimited projects across departments.
What this tier adds
Adds 5x the Plus credit allowance at 50,000 credits a month, 25 included users, unlimited projects, SSO, and standard roles.
Ultimate
Custom
Ideal for
Enterprises that need SCIM, custom roles, audit logs streamed to a SIEM, and a yearly credit pool sized to their volume.
What this tier adds
Adds credits sized with you and billed yearly, dedicated workers, execution priority, SCIM, custom RBAC, releases and Git Sync, audit logs, secret managers, and dedicated support.
Embed
From $36k/year
Ideal for
A SaaS company that wants to ship a white-label flow builder and agents inside its own product under its own brand.
What this tier adds
A distinct offering starting at $36k a year: white-label builder, one SDK, and your own pieces and templates.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Activepieces's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
Free covers exploration and one lightweight flow. Plus at $16/mo billed annually (or $20/mo monthly) fits a solo builder or a small team of up to 5 who want more credits and their own AI keys. Team at $166/mo billed annually (or $200/mo monthly) is where SSO, 25 seats, and unlimited projects arrive — that's roughly what Make charges a mid-size team and well under what Zapier's task pricing runs at volume. Ultimate is custom-priced for SCIM, audit logs, and dedicated workers.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Activepieces — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Cloud with the Free plan: minutes to a first flow, since Chat drafts it from a plain-English description. Self-hosting on Docker or Kubernetes: an hour or so for someone comfortable with containers, longer if you're wiring SSO, a secret manager, and SIEM streaming for the first time. Embedded white-label deploys are implementation projects scoped with sales.
Switching to or from Activepieces
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From Zapier: rebuild high-volume Zaps as flows or agents to escape per-task billing, using the HTTP piece for any app without a native connection.
- →From Make: map scenarios to flows, replacing step-level connectors with 760+ pieces and swapping per-operation billing for one credit per run.
- →From n8n: keep the visual-builder mental model, move onto an AI-native runtime with agents, tables, and MCP in the same workspace.
- →From a hand-rolled cron and scripts setup: move scheduled jobs into flows with retries, waitpoints, and resume-from-checkpoint.
- ↗To Zapier: if you need prebuilt connectors for niche or legacy systems that Activepieces' 760+ library doesn't cover.
- ↗To n8n: if you want a self-hostable workflow engine and don't need the agent, tables, and MCP surface.
- ↗To Make: if you want a large connector catalog and visual scenario building without an AI-first framing.
Integrations
Resources & Guides
- Documentationactivepieces.com
Welcome
Your friendliest open source all-in-one automation tool, designed to be extensible.
- Documentationactivepieces.com
How to Structure Projects
Full product docs from activepieces.com
- Documentationactivepieces.com
Overview
This section helps developers build and contribute pieces.
- Documentationactivepieces.com
Activepieces Handbook
Full product docs from activepieces.com
- Resourceactivepieces.com
Learn to automate your work
Helpful link from activepieces.com
- Resourceactivepieces.com
AI Agent Security: Knowing Risks and How to Stop Them
Helpful link from activepieces.com
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Activepieces”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Activepieces” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Activepieces.
Official links
Tools that pair well with Activepieces
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Activepieces, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
Coze Studio
Open-source, self-hosted AI agent builder with visual workflows, RAG knowledge bases, plugins, and an OpenAPI plus Chat SDK.
AutoGen Studio
Free, open-source web UI for prototyping multi-agent AI workflows on Microsoft's AutoGen AgentChat framework — no code required.
ChatDev
ChatDev 2.0 (DevAll) is a free, open-source zero-code multi-agent platform for orchestrating AI agent workflows from YAML or JSON config.
Featured Head-to-Head Comparisons
Activepieces vs Dify
Activepieces vs Make
If your priority is AI agent automation on a budget with self-hosting flexibility, pick Activepieces. If you need the widest integration library and advanced workflow logic (routers, iterators) across a massive app ecosystem, Make is your safer bet. Both are solid, but Activepieces leans into AI-first innovation while Make excels in general-purpose automation scale.
Activepieces vs Zapier
If you're AI-forward, cost-sensitive, or need on-prem compliance, Activepieces wins—it's cheaper, open-source, and ships built-in agent orchestration. But if you live off sheer app breadth (9,000+ integrations) and want enterprise polish with mature SLAs, Zapier is the safe bet. For most teams diving into AI automation today, Activepieces delivers more relevant value per dollar.
Activepieces vs N8n
Pick Activepieces if your buyers are non-engineers and you need AI agents with human approval gates running without anyone touching a terminal — the chat-to-workflow drafting and per-step approval gates are the differentiator. Pick n8n if your team is technical, writes JavaScript or Python, and needs to inspect every AI reasoning step with structured I/O and native evaluation before it hits production. The real split is who builds the flow: Activepieces assumes a marketer or ops lead; n8n assumes someone who can run Docker and read a debugger. If your non-technical staff must own the automations, n8n's friction and its €667/mo Business-tier entry for SSO/audit will bite you.
Alternatives to Activepieces
View all
Coze Studio
Open-source, self-hosted AI agent builder with visual workflows, RAG knowledge bases, plugins, and an OpenAPI plus Chat SDK.
AutoGen Studio
Free, open-source web UI for prototyping multi-agent AI workflows on Microsoft's AutoGen AgentChat framework — no code required.
Frequently Asked Questions
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