Is Activiti or Camunda better?

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

Which is cheaper, Activiti or Camunda?

Activiti has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Activiti and On request for Camunda.

Does Activiti or Camunda run on more platforms?

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

Can I use Activiti for free?

Yes. Activiti has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Camunda starts at On request.

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 Camunda is typically brought in for.

What can Activiti do that Camunda cannot?

Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Activiti Cloud, Modeler, Java and REST APIs. Camunda covers BPMN 2.0 execution, DMN decision tables, Zeebe engine, Operate console.

Automation Integration · head to head

Activiti vs Camunda

Activiti

Automation Integration

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

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Camunda

Automation Integration

BPMN process orchestration engine, now source-available rather than open source

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Only Activiti has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
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.; Camunda camunda 7 Community Edition stopped receiving security patches after the 7.24 release in October 2025, so free production deployments are now running unpatched software.
They diverge on capability: Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Camunda covers BPMN 2.0 execution.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Activiti and Camunda actually diverge.

Attributes where Activiti and Camunda differ
Attribute	Activiti	Camunda
Starting price	Free	On request
Pricing model	Open source, no licence fee	quote
Free tier	Yes	No
Platforms	Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes	Web, Linux, Docker, Kubernetes

Identical on both: 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 Camunda

BPMN 2.0 execution
DMN decision tables
Zeebe engine
Operate console
Job workers
Optimize

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

Camunda

Long-running business processes crossing several services where the state must be visible to non-developersnot Activiti
Insurance claims or loan origination where the process model is itself a compliance artefactnot Activiti
Replacing orchestration logic scattered across microservices with one engine that owns the state machinenot Activiti
A regulated organisation that needs an auditable record of how each process instance actually executednot 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.

Camunda

Camunda 7 Community Edition stopped receiving security patches after the 7.24 release in October 2025, so free production deployments are now running unpatched software.
Camunda 8 Self-Managed is source-available under the Camunda License 1.0, not open source: production use requires a paid licence, and organisations that adopted Camunda for its Apache licence have to renegotiate that decision.
Migrating from Camunda 7 to 8 is a rewrite rather than an upgrade because the engine, the API and the persistence model all changed, and there is no in-place migration for running instances.
Camunda 8 Self-Managed has substantial infrastructure requirements including Zeebe brokers, Elasticsearch and Identity, which is a considerable operations burden compared with the single database that Camunda 7 needed.
Pricing is not published at all, so evaluating total cost requires a sales process, and there is no way to size a budget before committing engineering time to a proof of concept.

Pricing, plan by plan

Activiti

Free

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

Camunda

On request

Camunda 8$undefined/year
- Self-Managed under Camunda License 1.0, production licence required
- SaaS with a thirty day full trial
- Free unlimited BPMN and DMN modelling after the trial

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 Camunda if

You need bpmn 2.0 execution.
You work on Web, Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.
You also want dmn decision tables.

Camunda review

Questions people ask

Is Activiti or Camunda better?: Neither clearly leads. Activiti starts at Free and Camunda at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Activiti or Camunda?: Activiti has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Activiti and On request for Camunda.
Does Activiti or Camunda run on more platforms?: Activiti runs on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Camunda runs on Web, Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.
Can I use Activiti for free?: Yes. Activiti has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Camunda starts at On request.
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 Camunda is typically brought in for.
What can Activiti do that Camunda cannot?: Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Activiti Cloud, Modeler, Java and REST APIs. Camunda covers BPMN 2.0 execution, DMN decision tables, Zeebe engine, Operate console.

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.

Camunda: Is Camunda still open source?

No. Camunda 8 Self-Managed ships under the Camunda License 1.0, which is source-available and requires a paid production licence.

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.

Camunda: What happened to Camunda 7?

Its final feature release, 7.24, was in October 2025 and the Community Edition receives no further patches. Enterprise support runs to April 2030.

Activiti: What licence is it?

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

Camunda: Can I upgrade from 7 to 8?

Not in place. The engine, API and persistence changed, so it is a rewrite of the integration layer.

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.

Camunda: What does it cost?

Camunda does not publish prices. Both self-managed production and SaaS require a quote.

Activiti vs Camunda

Activiti

Camunda

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Activiti

Only in Camunda

What people use each for

Activiti

Camunda

Where each one falls short

Activiti

Camunda

Pricing, plan by plan

Activiti

Camunda

Which should you pick?

Choose Activiti if

Choose Camunda if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Activiti

More on Camunda

Keep looking

Other head to heads