Automation Integration · head to head
Activiti vs Orkes
Activiti
Automation Integration
Apache 2.0 BPMN engine under Hyland, from which Flowable and Camunda were forked
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
Orkes
Automation Integration
Commercial Conductor, now the maintainer of the workflow engine Netflix archived
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
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.; Orkes netflix archived the Conductor repository in December 2023 and Orkes took over maintenance, so the large-company backing that justified many original adoptions no longer exists.
- They diverge on capability: Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Orkes covers JSON workflow definitions.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Activiti and Orkes actually diverge.
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 Orkes
- JSON workflow definitions
- Polyglot workers
- Visual workflow builder
- AI and LLM tasks
- Human tasks
- Event handlers
- RBAC and secrets
- Hosted or self-hosted
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 Orkes
- A Java application that needs to embed a BPMN engine as a library under a permissive licencenot Orkes
- An organisation that has ruled out Camunda 8 on licence grounds and needs an Apache 2.0 alternativenot Orkes
- Document-centric approval workflows where the process engine sits inside the content management stack rather than beside itnot Orkes
Orkes
- A microservices estate that needs orchestration across services written in different languages without a shared SDKnot Activiti
- A team already running Conductor OSS that wants a supported distribution now that Netflix has stopped maintaining itnot Activiti
- An AI platform composing agent steps, model calls and vector lookups as versioned workflow definitionsnot Activiti
- A business process needing human approval steps interleaved with automated service callsnot 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.
Orkes
- Netflix archived the Conductor repository in December 2023 and Orkes took over maintenance, so the large-company backing that justified many original adoptions no longer exists.
- Enterprise pricing is entirely unpublished, and the only free option is explicitly a prototyping sandbox whose limits can change at any time, so there is no supported low-cost entry point.
- Self-hosting Conductor OSS in production means operating the engine plus its persistence and indexing dependencies, typically Postgres or Cassandra with Elasticsearch, which is a substantial platform commitment.
- JSON workflow definitions are language agnostic but verbose and awkward to test, and teams accustomed to defining workflows in code find them a step backwards in developer experience.
- Orkes is a small company whose commercial future is tied to a single open source project it also maintains, which concentrates both vendor and project risk in the same place.
Pricing, plan by plan
Activiti
Free- ActivitiFree
- Apache 2.0 licence
- Embeddable Java library or Activiti Cloud services
- No usage limits
Orkes
Free- Developer EditionFree
- All Conductor OSS features plus enterprise capabilities
- Sandbox for prototyping only
- Rate limits and resources may change without notice
- Enterprise$undefined/year
- Availability SLA up to 99.99%
- Orkes-hosted or customer-hosted deployment
- Dedicated technical account manager
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.
Choose Orkes if
- You need json workflow definitions.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud.
- You also want polyglot workers.
Questions people ask
- Is Activiti or Orkes better?
- Neither clearly leads. Activiti starts at Free and Orkes at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Activiti or Orkes?
- Activiti starts at Free and Orkes at Free.
- Does Activiti or Orkes run on more platforms?
- Activiti runs on Linux, Windows, Docker, Kubernetes. Orkes runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud.
- 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 Orkes is typically brought in for.
- What can Activiti do that Orkes cannot?
- Activiti covers BPMN 2.0 engine, Activiti Cloud, Modeler, Java and REST APIs. Orkes covers JSON workflow definitions, Polyglot workers, Visual workflow builder, AI and LLM tasks.
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.
Orkes: Does Netflix still maintain Conductor?
No. Netflix archived its repository in December 2023. The open source project continues at conductor-oss under Apache 2.0, maintained by Orkes.
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.
Orkes: Is there a free production tier?
No. The Developer Edition is a sandbox that the vendor states is unsuitable for production. Self-hosting Conductor OSS is the free production route.
Activiti: What licence is it?
Apache 2.0, which distinguishes it from Camunda 8’s source-available licence.
Orkes: What does Enterprise cost?
Nothing is published; it is quoted by deployment and support requirements.
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.
Orkes: How does it compare with Temporal?
Conductor uses declarative JSON workflow definitions and external workers; Temporal defines workflows in code. Temporal has the larger community.
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