Softwr

Automation Integration · head to head

Activiti vs Timeplus

Activiti logo

Activiti

Automation Integration

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Timeplus logo

Timeplus

Databases

Streaming SQL engine built on ClickHouse internals, shipping as one small binary

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

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.; Timeplus proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
  • They diverge on capability: Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Timeplus covers Streaming SQL.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Activiti and Timeplus actually diverge.

Attributes where Activiti and Timeplus differ
AttributeActivitiTimeplus
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month for cloud, quoted for self-hosted
PlatformsLinux, Windows, Docker, KubernetesLinux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web
CategoryAutomation IntegrationDatabases

Identical on both: starting price (Free), 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 Timeplus

  • Streaming SQL
  • Unified streaming and historical
  • ClickHouse-based engine
  • Single binary deployment
  • External streams
  • Materialised views

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 Timeplus
  • A Java application that needs to embed a BPMN engine as a library under a permissive licencenot Timeplus
  • An organisation that has ruled out Camunda 8 on licence grounds and needs an Apache 2.0 alternativenot Timeplus
  • Document-centric approval workflows where the process engine sits inside the content management stack rather than beside itnot Timeplus

Timeplus

  • Real-time alerting on Kafka topics where standing up a Flink cluster is more work than the use case justifiesnot Activiti
  • Fraud or anomaly detection that must join a live event stream against recent history in one querynot Activiti
  • Streaming ETL from Kafka or MySQL change data capture into ClickHouse without writing Javanot Activiti
  • A small data team that needs continuous aggregation but has no platform engineers to operate JVM infrastructurenot 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.

Timeplus

  • Proton, the free version, is single-node by design, so any requirement for high availability or horizontal scale forces the commercial licence; the open source edition is a trial in practical terms.
  • It is a young project against Apache Flink’s decade of production history, so the hiring pool, the connector library and the body of known failure modes are all much smaller.
  • Inheriting ClickHouse internals also inherits ClickHouse constraints: memory-hungry queries, awkward updates and a SQL dialect that is not portable to other engines.
  • Exactly-once semantics and state recovery guarantees are less battle-tested than Flink checkpointing, which matters if the pipeline moves money.
  • Cloud pricing is by provisioned instance size rather than usage, so a bursty workload pays for peak capacity around the clock or has to be resized by hand.

Pricing, plan by plan

Activiti

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

Timeplus

Free
  • Timeplus ProtonFree
    • Apache 2.0 licence
    • Single node only
    • Full streaming SQL engine
  • Timeplus Cloud$199/month
    • One to thirty-two CPUs
    • 4 GB to 128 GB memory
    • From 250 GB SSD storage
  • Self-hosted or BYOC$undefined/year
    • Multi-node clustering
    • Kubernetes or bare metal
    • Customisable compute and storage

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 Timeplus if

  • You need streaming sql.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
  • You also want unified streaming and historical.
Timeplus review

Questions people ask

Is Activiti or Timeplus better?
Neither clearly leads. Activiti starts at Free and Timeplus at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Activiti or Timeplus?
Activiti starts at Free and Timeplus at Free.
Does Activiti or Timeplus run on more platforms?
Activiti runs on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Timeplus runs on Linux, macOS, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
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 Timeplus is typically brought in for.
What can Activiti do that Timeplus cannot?
Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Activiti Cloud, Modeler, Java and REST APIs. Timeplus covers Streaming SQL, Unified streaming and historical, ClickHouse-based engine, Single binary deployment.

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.

Timeplus: Is Timeplus open source?

The core engine, Timeplus Proton, is Apache 2.0. Timeplus Enterprise and Cloud are commercial.

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.

Timeplus: What is the difference from Flink?

Timeplus is one binary with SQL as the only interface; Flink is a JVM cluster with a Java and SQL API and far more operational surface.

Activiti: What licence is it?

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

Timeplus: Can Proton run in production?

It can, but it is single-node only, so there is no high availability without the commercial edition.

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.

Timeplus: How much is the cloud?

From 199 US dollars a month, sized by CPU and memory, with a fourteen day trial.

Share

Related pages

More on Activiti

More on Timeplus

Keep looking

Other head to heads