Is Activiti or Presto better?

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

Which is cheaper, Activiti or Presto?

Activiti starts at Free and Presto at Free.

Does Activiti or Presto run on more platforms?

Activiti runs on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Presto runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.

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 Presto is typically brought in for.

What can Activiti do that Presto cannot?

Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Activiti Cloud, Modeler, Java and REST APIs. Presto covers Federated querying, In-memory execution, Open table format support, Presto C++ workers.

Automation Integration · head to head

Activiti vs Presto

Activiti

Automation Integration

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

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Presto

Databases

The Meta-lineage distributed SQL query engine, distinct from the Trino fork

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.; Presto the original creators and most of the active contributor base left for Trino in 2020, so Presto has the smaller community, fewer connectors and slower feature delivery of the two branches.
They diverge on capability: Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Presto covers Federated querying.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Activiti and Presto actually diverge.

Attributes where Activiti and Presto differ
Attribute	Activiti	Presto
Platforms	Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes	Linux, Docker, Kubernetes
Category	Automation Integration	Databases

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (Open source, no licence fee), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

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 Presto

Federated querying
In-memory execution
Open table format support
Presto C++ workers
ANSI SQL
Pluggable 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 Presto
A Java application that needs to embed a BPMN engine as a library under a permissive licencenot Presto
An organisation that has ruled out Camunda 8 on licence grounds and needs an Apache 2.0 alternativenot Presto
Document-centric approval workflows where the process engine sits inside the content management stack rather than beside itnot Presto

Presto

An existing PrestoDB estate that needs continued upgrades rather than a migration to Trinonot Activiti
A team buying IBM watsonx.data, where Presto is the underlying query enginenot Activiti
Joining a Hive or Iceberg lake to an operational PostgreSQL database in one query without an ETL stepnot Activiti
Very large scale interactive SQL where the Meta-tested branch is a specific requirementnot 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.

Presto

The original creators and most of the active contributor base left for Trino in 2020, so Presto has the smaller community, fewer connectors and slower feature delivery of the two branches.
Documentation, tutorials and Stack Overflow answers for the two projects are frequently mixed up, and a solution written for Trino often does not apply, which costs real debugging time.
It is a query engine with no storage of its own, so query performance is dictated by your file layout, partitioning and statistics, and a badly organised lake makes Presto look slow.
Memory-bound execution means a single large join can fail the whole query rather than spilling gracefully, and tuning cluster memory settings is a persistent operational chore.
Commercial support has consolidated into IBM since the Ahana acquisition, so the independent vendor market that once existed around Presto is largely gone.

Pricing, plan by plan

Activiti

Free

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

Presto

Free

PrestoFree
- Apache 2.0 licence
- Presto Foundation governance under the Linux Foundation
- No node or query limits

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 Presto if

You need federated querying.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.
You also want in-memory execution.

Presto review

Questions people ask

Is Activiti or Presto better?: Neither clearly leads. Activiti starts at Free and Presto at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Activiti or Presto?: Activiti starts at Free and Presto at Free.
Does Activiti or Presto run on more platforms?: Activiti runs on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Presto runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.
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 Presto is typically brought in for.
What can Activiti do that Presto cannot?: Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Activiti Cloud, Modeler, Java and REST APIs. Presto covers Federated querying, In-memory execution, Open table format support, Presto C++ workers.

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.

Presto: Is this Presto or Trino?

This is PrestoDB, the branch that stayed at Facebook and moved to the Linux Foundation. Trino is the 2020 fork by the original creators.

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.

Presto: Which should I choose for a new project?

Trino, in most cases. It has the larger community, more connectors and more commercial options.

Activiti: What licence is it?

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

Presto: Who maintains Presto now?

Principally Meta, Uber and IBM, which acquired the Presto vendor Ahana in 2023.

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.

Presto: Is it still actively released?

Yes, releases continue on a regular cadence under the Presto Foundation.

Activiti vs Presto

Activiti

Presto

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Activiti

Only in Presto

What people use each for

Activiti

Presto

Where each one falls short

Activiti

Presto

Pricing, plan by plan

Activiti

Presto

Which should you pick?

Choose Activiti if

Choose Presto if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Activiti

More on Presto

Keep looking

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