Good for / not for
- Small teams replacing Zapier who want the option to move the whole thing onto their own servers.
- Anyone who needs a licence with no strings: Activepieces is MIT, so modifying it and running it commercially are both allowed.
- Trying automation without a card — the free plan is 100 credits a day, one user and an unlimited number of flows.
- Wiring an AI model into an existing flow, with MCP and API access included on the free plan.
- Teams that need the widest integration catalogue; one comparison puts Activepieces at about 450 pieces against roughly 1,100 for n8n.
- Deeply nested logic. The architecture is linear, and complex arrays, binary data and advanced error handling are more restrictive than in n8n.
- Organisations that need SSO without paying for it: SSO is listed on the Team plan, $166 a month billed yearly.
What it actually does
Activepieces is a flow builder: a trigger on one side, a chain of steps on the other, and a catalogue of connectors — pieces, in its vocabulary — in between. If you have used Zapier, the shape is familiar. What differs is where it can run and what you are permitted to do with it. The licence is MIT, so you can host it on your own infrastructure, modify it and run it commercially without asking anyone; Dify's licence and n8n's both restrict some of that, and this one does not. The hosted free plan gives 100 credits a day, one user and an unlimited number of flows, with MCP and API access included, no card, and no expiry date on the plan. Plus, at $16 a month billed yearly, raises that to 10,000 credits a month, allows up to five users, lets you bring your own AI keys and charges $0.007 for each credit over the allowance. Team, at $166 a month billed yearly, is 50,000 credits a month, up to 25 users, SSO and Git Sync. The trade you are making is breadth: a smaller piece catalogue than n8n's, and flatter flow logic.
Sign up for Activepieces Cloud and stay on the free plan.
100 credits a day, one user, an unlimited number of flows, and MCP and API access. No card is required, and the plan is free forever.
From the vendor's docsPricing and free-plan limits
Free tier: $0 forever with no card: 100 credits a day, one user and an unlimited number of flows.
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | Free |
Limits: 100 credits/day · 1 user Free forever, no card required. Self-hosting is free too, under the MIT licence. |
| Plus | $16/month |
$16 a month is the price billed yearly. Credits beyond the allowance are $0.007 each. |
| Team | $166/month |
$166 a month is the price billed yearly. |
| Ultimate | Custom pricing |
No figure is published. |
Prices checked on Sep 6, 2026 against the vendor's pricing page. Plans change often — confirm before you pay.
Three honest limitations
- The architecture is linear, so nested If/Else is limited, and complex arrays, binary data and advanced error handling are more restrictive than in n8n.
- SSO and audit logs sit behind the paywall; SSO is listed on the Team plan at $166 a month billed yearly, and is not among the features listed for the free plan or for Plus.
- The release pace is fast — v0.90.2 shipped on 4 September 2026 — and one comparison reports that rapid releases can destabilise self-hosted instances.
Alternatives
- n8n — Choose n8n instead if you need the larger integration catalogue and nested branching, and can accept a licence that is not OSI open source.
- Dify — Choose Dify instead if the job is a chatbot answering from your own documents rather than moving data between apps.
- Langflow — Choose Langflow instead if you are prototyping model and retrieval pipelines rather than connecting SaaS tools.
Getting started in 5 minutes
- Sign up at activepieces.com; the free plan is free forever and needs no card.
- Build one flow on a real trigger — a form submission, a new row, an inbound email — rather than a demo.
- Watch the meter: the free plan is 100 credits a day, not a monthly pool you can spend in one afternoon.
- To self-host, take the MIT-licensed repository and run the same builder on your own infrastructure at no cost.
- Move to Plus ($16 a month billed yearly) when you need a second user or your own AI keys; SSO and Git Sync start on Team at $166 a month billed yearly.
Activepieces questions
- Is Activepieces free?
- On two counts. The hosted free plan is 100 credits a day, one user and unlimited flows, free forever and with no card. And the source is MIT-licensed, so self-hosting costs nothing beyond your own servers.
- Is Activepieces really open source?
- Yes. The repository is MIT-licensed, with no added use restrictions. That is the difference from n8n, whose Sustainable Use License is not OSI open source, and from Dify, whose licence adds two conditions to Apache-2.0. Langflow is MIT as well.
- Can I get SSO?
- SSO is listed on the Team plan, $166 a month billed yearly, together with 50,000 credits a month, up to 25 users and Git Sync. It is not among the features listed for the free plan or for Plus.
- How big is the integration catalogue?
- One comparison of the two puts Activepieces at about 450 pieces and n8n at about 1,100. If the connector you need is not there, that gap is the reason to look at n8n.
- Activepieces or n8n?
- Activepieces if the licence matters to you and your flows are reasonably flat. n8n if you need the bigger catalogue and nested logic. Both score 4.8 out of 5 on G2.
Sources
- Activepieces pricing (free plan, Plus $16/month billed yearly, Team $166/month billed yearly)
- GitHub repository (MIT, 24,298 stars, v0.90.2 on 2026-09-04)
- n8n vs Activepieces comparison (piece counts, linear architecture, self-hosted release pace)
- Source code: MIT
Research-compiled, not hands-on tested. Compiled from official docs, the vendor's pricing page and community reviews as of Sep 6, 2026. We haven't tested it hands-on yet.