n8n vs Activepieces: The Open-Source Alternative, Compared

Activepieces is the newest serious alternative to n8n, and the licence is the main reason to look at it. Its core is MIT-licensed, while n8n's Sustainable Use License stops you offering n8n as a service for other people to build on. If that restriction matters to you, as it does for software vendors and managed service providers, Activepieces deserves a proper trial. For most businesses automating their own work, n8n's larger integration library and community still make it the safer choice.

We are Osher Digital, a Brisbane automation consultancy. n8n is our main workflow tool, and we have piloted Activepieces twice. The facts below come from each project's own pricing pages, documentation and GitHub repositories, checked on 27 October 2026. For the hosted, closed-source options, see our comparisons of n8n vs Zapier and n8n vs Make.

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The two side by side

	n8n	Activepieces
Licence	Sustainable Use License, which n8n calls "fair-code" rather than open source	MIT for the core; enterprise features under a commercial licence
What you pay for on cloud	Executions: one run of the whole workflow	Credits: one per run however many steps, more for AI steps
Cloud prices	Starter €20 a month (annual) for 2,500 executions; Pro €50 for 10,000	Free 1,000 credits; Plus $20 a month for 10,000; Team $200 for 50,000
Self-hosting	Free Community Edition	Free Community edition, by Docker Compose or Helm
Integrations	More than 2,000	772 "pieces"
AI agents	AI Agent node with LangChain tools, memory and vector stores	Agents that can use any action from its pieces as a tool
MCP	MCP server trigger exposes workflows to AI clients	One MCP server for the whole instance, on every plan
Community	About 209,000 GitHub stars	About 25,000 GitHub stars

Activepieces shows its prices with a dollar sign and no currency. They are almost certainly US dollars, but confirm before you budget.

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The licence question

This is where the two really differ, so it is worth being precise.

n8n's Sustainable Use License lets you run n8n for your own business, and it lets a consultancy like ours build and maintain workflows for clients. What it does not allow is hosting n8n as a service so that your customers build their own workflows, white-labelling it, or forking it to launch a product. If you want those things, you need a commercial agreement with n8n.

Activepieces puts everything outside two enterprise folders under the MIT licence, which allows almost anything, including embedding it in your own product. The two enterprise folders carry a commercial licence: free to develop and test with, but production use needs an agreement or an Enterprise licence. Activepieces also sells an Embed plan for software vendors who want automation inside their product, from US$36,000 a year.

Who should care:

• A software company that wants customers to build automations inside its product.
• A managed service provider that wants to offer a hosted automation platform to its clients.
• An organisation whose policy requires an OSI-approved licence for any self-hosted software.

If none of those describe you, the licence difference will not affect your day-to-day work.

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Pricing

Both tools charge for runs, not steps, which already puts them ahead of Zapier and Make for long workflows.

At 10,000 runs a month with no AI steps, Activepieces Plus is $20 a month and n8n Cloud Pro is €50 a month on annual billing. AI steps change the picture on Activepieces: each one costs 2, 10 or 20 credits depending on the model tier, so an agent-heavy workflow burns credits much faster. On n8n, AI steps do not change the execution count, and you pay your model provider directly.

Self-hosted, both are free to run. The real cost is a server and the time of someone who can look after it.

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What we found in our pilots

The Activepieces interface is cleaner than n8n's in places, and people new to automation pick it up quickly.

The integration library is the main gap. Activepieces lists 772 pieces against n8n's 2,000-plus. For mainstream tools that rarely matters. In our experience, for Australian accounting, practice management and industry systems, it often does, and when a piece is missing you are writing HTTP requests by hand.

The community gap is large too. n8n has roughly eight times as many GitHub stars, and, in our experience, far more forum answers and shared templates. When something goes wrong at 2am, that history helps.

AI features have moved quickly on both sides. Activepieces agents can now use any action from its pieces as a tool and return structured data to the next step, and every plan includes an MCP server. n8n's agent tooling is still deeper, with LangChain memory, vector stores and retrievers built in, but the gap is narrower than it was.

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Which to choose

• Choose n8n if you are automating your own operations, need the widest set of integrations, or want the larger community and the deeper AI tooling.
• Choose Activepieces if you need an MIT-licensed core, plan to embed automation in your own product, or want to offer hosted automation to clients without a commercial agreement for the core.
• Pilot both if you are unsure. Both have free self-hosted editions, so a two-week trial on one real workflow costs little more than the time.

Either way, host it where your data needs to be. We run n8n for clients on Australian servers, and Activepieces can be self-hosted the same way. Our n8n consultants page explains how we work, or you can book a 15-minute call to talk through your situation.

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Frequently asked questions

Is Activepieces open source?

Mostly. Everything outside its two enterprise folders is under the MIT licence. The code in those folders carries a commercial licence that needs an agreement for production use.

Is n8n open source?

n8n describes itself as "fair-code", not open source. Its Sustainable Use License lets you self-host and use it for your own business free of charge, but restricts offering n8n as a service to others.

Can I self-host Activepieces for free?

Yes. The Community edition runs on Docker Compose or a Helm chart at no licence cost. The enterprise features need a commercial licence.

Can we move from n8n to Activepieces later?

You can, but it is a rebuild. Each tool exports its own workflow format, so expect to recreate flows and credentials one at a time, and run both side by side until the new version has proven itself.