Camundavs
Temporal
Temporal: Temporal if developers own the process definitions and a code-first workflow model suits better than BPMN.
Camunda
BPMN process orchestration engine, now source-available rather than open source
As of 31 August 2026, Camunda's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. The standard developer-facing BPMN engine, but the ground has moved: Camunda 7 Community Edition stopped receiving patches in October 2025 and Camunda 8 Self-Managed requires a paid production licence. Softwr lists it under Automation Integration. Camunda is available on Web, Linux, Docker, Kubernetes.
Overview
What Camunda does
Camunda executes BPMN process models and DMN decision tables as running software. Developers model a process in a graphical editor, deploy it to the engine, and implement each task as a worker in Java, Node, C#, Python or Go. The engine holds process state, handles timers, retries, incidents and compensation, and exposes an operations console showing exactly where every instance is stuck. Camunda 8 replaced the earlier relational engine with Zeebe, a horizontally scalable event-sourced runtime. The licence change is the fact that should drive any decision here. Camunda 7 was Apache 2.0 with a genuinely usable Community Edition, and a large number of organisations ran it in production for free. The final Camunda 7 feature release, 7.24, shipped on 14 October 2025, after which the Community Edition receives no further security patches; Enterprise support for Camunda 7 was extended to 9 April 2030. Since October 2024 all Camunda 8 Self-Managed components ship under the Camunda License 1.0, which allows reading the source and using it for development and testing but requires a paid production licence to run. That is source-available, not open source, and procurement teams that catalogued Camunda as Apache 2.0 years ago are frequently unaware. The buyer is an enterprise development team orchestrating long-running processes across services, typically in insurance, banking, telecommunications and logistics. The trade off is now largely commercial rather than technical: Camunda 8 is a better engine than Camunda 7 at scale, and the migration path from 7 to 8 is a rewrite of the integration layer rather than an upgrade.
What people use it for
- Long-running business processes crossing several services where the state must be visible to non-developers
- Insurance claims or loan origination where the process model is itself a compliance artefact
- Replacing orchestration logic scattered across microservices with one engine that owns the state machine
- A regulated organisation that needs an auditable record of how each process instance actually executed
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Camunda
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- Camundavsn8n
n8n: n8n if the requirement is integration automation rather than modelled, auditable business processes.
- CamundavsConductor
Conductor: Conductor for a workflow orchestration engine with a code and JSON definition model rather than BPMN.
Pricing
What Camunda costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Camunda 8
On request
- 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
- Zeebe engine, Operate, Tasklist and Optimize
- Volume discounts on enterprise agreements
- Pricing on application
Capabilities
Features
BPMN 2.0 execution
Standards-based process models that run directly rather than being translated to code
DMN decision tables
Business rules maintained as tables separate from the process logic
Zeebe engine
Event-sourced, horizontally partitioned runtime for high process-instance throughput
Operate console
Live view of every running instance, incidents and stuck tokens
Job workers
Task implementations in Java, Node, Python, Go and C# polling the engine
Optimize
Historical process analytics for cycle time and bottleneck reporting
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
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.
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.
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.
What does it cost?
Camunda does not publish prices. Both self-managed production and SaaS require a quote.
Keep looking
Where to go from Camunda
- Camunda alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Camunda pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Camunda badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Automation Integration softwareThe full category
- Best Automation Integration softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Automation Integration software for
Compare Camunda with
- n8n
- Temporal
- Flowable
- Activiti
- Kogito
- jBPM
- Parabola
- Blue Prism
- UiPath
- Zapier
- Microsoft Power Automate
- Paragon
- Mage AI
- mParticle
- Nintex
- Alloy Automation
- Celigo
- UiPath
Other Automation Integration software
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Open source12 researched notesCloud-native business automation for Quarkus, now an Apache KIE component
Open source12 researched notesLong-running Java BPMN engine, now developed inside Apache KIE with commercial support from IBM
Open source12 researched notesAutomate tasks across cloud and on-premises apps
Free, then $15/mo11 researched notesData pipeline platform with AI-generated workflows and governance
From $100/mo10 researched notesEmbedded integration platform and unified API, repositioned from ecommerce automation towards AI agent connectivity
Pricing on request13 researched notes
Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Camunda, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Camunda
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