Is Activiti or Decodable better?

Neither clearly leads. Activiti starts at Free and Decodable at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Activiti or Decodable?

Activiti starts at Free and Decodable at Free.

Does Activiti or Decodable run on more platforms?

Activiti runs on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Decodable runs on Web, Linux.

Can I use Activiti for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Activiti best used for?

Activiti is most often used for an alfresco or hyland content services deployment where activiti is already the embedded workflow engine, a java application that needs to embed a bpmn engine as a library under a permissive licence, an organisation that has ruled out camunda 8 on licence grounds and needs an apache 2.0 alternative, document-centric approval workflows where the process engine sits inside the content management stack rather than beside it. Of those, an alfresco or hyland content services deployment where activiti is already the embedded workflow engine and a java application that needs to embed a bpmn engine as a library under a permissive licence are not what Decodable is typically brought in for.

What can Activiti do that Decodable cannot?

Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Activiti Cloud, Modeler, Java and REST APIs. Decodable covers Managed Flink, Change data capture, SQL pipelines, Custom Flink jobs.

Automation Integration · head to head

Activiti vs Decodable

Activiti

Automation Integration

Apache 2.0 BPMN engine under Hyland, from which Flowable and Camunda were forked

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Decodable

Automation Integration

Managed Apache Flink and Debezium with credit-based pricing and a free tier

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Activiti the last stable release was 8.2.0 in January 2024, and while release candidate builds continue, a two-year gap between stable versions is a real risk signal for a production dependency.; Decodable credit pricing rewards intermittent work and penalises always-on pipelines: a single small task running continuously costs roughly 86 US dollars a month before any parallelism.
They diverge on capability: Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Decodable covers Managed Flink.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Activiti and Decodable actually diverge.

Attributes where Activiti and Decodable differ
Attribute	Activiti	Decodable
Pricing model	Open source, no licence fee	Per credit by task hour
Platforms	Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes	Web, Linux

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Automation Integration).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Activiti

BPMN 2.0 engine
Activiti Cloud
Modeler
Java and REST APIs
Pluggable persistence
Identity integration

Only in Decodable

Managed Flink
Change data capture
SQL pipelines
Custom Flink jobs
Credit-based metering
Managed connectors

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Activiti

An Alfresco or Hyland content services deployment where Activiti is already the embedded workflow enginenot Decodable
A Java application that needs to embed a BPMN engine as a library under a permissive licencenot Decodable
An organisation that has ruled out Camunda 8 on licence grounds and needs an Apache 2.0 alternativenot Decodable
Document-centric approval workflows where the process engine sits inside the content management stack rather than beside itnot Decodable

Decodable

Streaming Postgres change data capture into Snowflake or Iceberg without running Debezium and Kafka Connect yourselfnot Activiti
Real-time enrichment and filtering of event streams before they reach an expensive warehousenot Activiti
A team that already writes Flink jobs but does not want to operate the cluster, checkpoint store or upgradesnot Activiti
Replacing a fragile set of cron jobs and Lambda functions that move data between operational systemsnot Activiti

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Activiti

The last stable release was 8.2.0 in January 2024, and while release candidate builds continue, a two-year gap between stable versions is a real risk signal for a production dependency.
Both Camunda and Flowable forked away and took large parts of the contributor base with them, so the community, tutorials and third-party tooling around Activiti are much thinner than around either fork.
Commercial support is only realistically available by buying Hyland Alfresco subscriptions, so there is no way to pay for Activiti support on its own.
Activiti Cloud imposes a distributed architecture of several Spring Boot services plus Keycloak, which is heavy for teams who simply wanted an embeddable engine.
Documentation is dated and partly split between old Alfresco sites and Hyland Connect, and the transition between Activiti 6, 7 and 8 architectures makes much of the older material actively misleading.

Decodable

Credit pricing rewards intermittent work and penalises always-on pipelines: a single small task running continuously costs roughly 86 US dollars a month before any parallelism.
Parallelism multiplies tasks, so scaling a pipeline to keep up with throughput multiplies the bill in a way that is easy to under-forecast at design time.
The free tier retains streams for only 24 hours, which is too short to debug an intermittent failure that surfaces days later.
Java and Python transformations are gated behind paid plans, so anything the SQL layer cannot express means moving off the free tier immediately.
The operational layer is proprietary even though Flink and Debezium are not, so migrating to self-managed Flink later means rebuilding connectors, schema handling and monitoring from scratch.

Pricing, plan by plan

Activiti

Free

ActivitiFree
- Apache 2.0 licence
- Embeddable Java library or Activiti Cloud services
- No usage limits

Decodable

Free

FreeFree
- Up to four concurrent tasks
- Small and medium task sizes
- 24 hour or 10 GB stream retention
On Demand$undefined/month
- 0.12 USD per credit, billed monthly
- Unlimited concurrent tasks
- Small, medium and large task sizes
Enterprise$undefined/year
- 0.10 USD per credit on pre-purchased annual capacity
- Custom task sizes
- Extensible retention

Which should you pick?

Choose Activiti if

You need bpmn 2.0 engine.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes.
You also want activiti cloud.

Activiti review

Choose Decodable if

You need managed flink.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Web, Linux.
You also want change data capture.

Decodable review

Questions people ask

Is Activiti or Decodable better?: Neither clearly leads. Activiti starts at Free and Decodable at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Activiti or Decodable?: Activiti starts at Free and Decodable at Free.
Does Activiti or Decodable run on more platforms?: Activiti runs on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Decodable runs on Web, Linux.
Can I use Activiti for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Activiti best used for?: Activiti is most often used for an alfresco or hyland content services deployment where activiti is already the embedded workflow engine, a java application that needs to embed a bpmn engine as a library under a permissive licence, an organisation that has ruled out camunda 8 on licence grounds and needs an apache 2.0 alternative, document-centric approval workflows where the process engine sits inside the content management stack rather than beside it. Of those, an alfresco or hyland content services deployment where activiti is already the embedded workflow engine and a java application that needs to embed a bpmn engine as a library under a permissive licence are not what Decodable is typically brought in for.
What can Activiti do that Decodable cannot?: Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Activiti Cloud, Modeler, Java and REST APIs. Decodable covers Managed Flink, Change data capture, SQL pipelines, Custom Flink jobs.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Activiti: Is Activiti still maintained?

Yes, Hyland continues to publish builds, but the last stable release was 8.2.0 in January 2024.

Decodable: What is a credit worth?

0.12 US dollars on On Demand and 0.10 on Enterprise. A small task consumes one credit per hour, medium two, large four.

Activiti: What is its relationship to Camunda and Flowable?

Both are forks of Activiti: Camunda in 2013 and Flowable in 2016, when core developers left Alfresco.

Decodable: Is there a free plan?

Yes, up to four concurrent tasks with 24 hour or 10 GB stream retention.

Activiti: What licence is it?

Apache 2.0, which distinguishes it from Camunda 8’s source-available licence.

Decodable: Is it really Apache Flink underneath?

Yes, Flink for processing and Debezium for change data capture, both managed by Decodable.

Activiti: Should I choose Activiti for a new project?

Only if the Apache licence or an existing Alfresco deployment is decisive. Flowable and Camunda have far larger ecosystems.

Decodable: Can I run my own Flink jobs?

Yes, Java and Python jobs on paid plans; the free plan is SQL only.

Activiti vs Decodable

Activiti

Decodable

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Activiti

Only in Decodable

What people use each for

Activiti

Decodable

Where each one falls short

Activiti

Decodable

Pricing, plan by plan

Activiti

Decodable

Which should you pick?

Choose Activiti if

Choose Decodable if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Activiti

More on Decodable

Keep looking

Other head to heads