Workflow Automation

3 open source tools compared. Sorted by stars. Scroll down for our analysis.

Tool	Stars	Velocity	Language	License	Score
n8n Fair-code workflow automation with native AI capabilities	187.3k	+657/wk	TypeScript	Sustainable Use License	74
Argo Workflows Kubernetes workflow engine	16.7k	+12/wk	Go	Apache License 2.0	85
camunda Process Orchestration Framework	4.1k	+18/wk	Java	-	61

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Our Analysis

n8n187.3k★

N8n is the open source alternative to Zapier. It gives you a visual workflow builder where you drag nodes, connect them, and watch data flow through. Over 400 integrations built in. Self-hosting is free under a 'sustainable use' license (not fully open source, you can't resell it as a service). The cloud version starts at $24/mo. The self-hosted version has no feature restrictions, no execution limits, and no user limits. The catch: setting up n8n in Docker and keeping it running takes real skill. Updates can break workflows. The 'sustainable use' license means you can't build a competing automation platform on top of it. And while the visual builder is powerful, complex logic (loops, error handling, conditional branches) gets messy in a node graph. Sometimes a Python script is cleaner than 40 connected nodes.

Argo Workflows16.7k★

Argo Workflows orchestrates multi-step jobs on Kubernetes: data pipelines, CI/CD, ML training, batch processing, all defined as directed acyclic graphs in YAML. Each step in your workflow runs as a container on your cluster. You get parallelism, retries, conditionals, loops, and artifact passing between steps. The web UI shows you the DAG visually with real-time status. It's a CNCF graduated project, which means serious production adoption. Used by Intuit, Tesla, Google, and many others. Completely free. Apache 2.0 license. Akuity offers commercial support and Argo CD (related but separate) as a managed service, but Argo Workflows itself is free. Small teams already on Kubernetes who need workflow orchestration beyond simple CronJobs should look here. If you're NOT on Kubernetes, this isn't for you. The entire model assumes K8s. The catch: you need Kubernetes. That's a hard prerequisite. And YAML workflow definitions get painful fast for complex pipelines. The learning curve combines Kubernetes complexity with workflow engine complexity. Not for the faint of heart.

Camunda orchestrates business processes across people, systems, and devices. BPMN workflow engine, human task management, monitoring dashboards, and analytics, all in one platform. Organizations running complex multi-step processes that involve both automated systems and human decisions will find this built for exactly that problem. The core engine (Zeebe) is a high-throughput, horizontally scalable workflow engine built on gRPC. Self-hosting on Kubernetes is the standard deployment path. It handles millions of workflow instances and integrates with Kafka and standard message queues. The operational tooling (Operate, Tasklist, Optimize) gives you visibility into running processes and human task queues. Enterprise teams with complex approval workflows, order processing, or compliance processes get the most value. Solo developers and small teams will find it overkill unless they're specifically building process orchestration. The cloud offering removes the ops burden but comes at enterprise pricing. The catch: the community edition is real and usable, but the best operational tooling is gated behind enterprise licensing. And running Zeebe on Kubernetes is not trivial ops work.