Workflow automation tools in 2026

Narrower

• Workflow orchestration engines 33 AWS Step Functions, Temporal Cloud and Astronomer
• BPM suites and BPMN workflow engines 34 IBM Business Automation Workflow, Appian and Camunda
• Robotic process automation (RPA) tools 33 UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism

Commercial workflow automation tools

1. 1
   IBM Business Automation Workflow IBM

   IBM Business Automation Workflow helps you automate your digital workflows to increase productivity, efficiency, and insights — on premises or on cloud

   Framework or platform Production-ready A large enterprise already runs IBM BPM and wants to keep its workflows on supported IBM software.

   Commercial
2. 2
   UiPath UiPath

   Transform enterprise operations with the UiPath Platform™ for business orchestration and automation, enabling AI agents, robots, and people to deliver secure, compliant outcomes at scale.

   Framework or platform Production-ready A large organisation has many repetitive processes in legacy systems without APIs and will fund an automation centre of excellence.

   1.6k readers a month Since 2005 Commercial
3. 3
   Zapier Zapier

   Build and scale AI workflows and agents across 9,000+ apps with Zapier—the most connected AI orchestration platform. Trusted by 3 million+ businesses.

   Complete system Production-ready A non-technical team wants to connect SaaS apps quickly and the widest app catalogue matters most.

   1.5k readers a month Commercial
4. 4
   Appian Appian Corporation

   AI automation for critical processes. Appian orchestrates AI agents, systems, and people on an enterprise platform, without replacing your systems.

   Framework or platform Production-ready A regulated enterprise or government agency needs complex case-management processes built quickly.

   766 readers a month Since 1999 Commercial
5. 5
   IFTTT IFTTT

   IFTTT connects 1,000+ apps and automates them for free — no code needed. Connect Google, Webhooks, Discord, Telegram, Slack and more in minutes.

   Complete system Production-ready An individual wants simple personal or smart-home automations.

   518 readers a month Since 2010 Commercial
6. 6
   Microsoft Power Automate Microsoft

   Automate workflows and business processes across apps, systems, and websites with Microsoft Power Automate using AI, digital, and robotic process automation.

   Complete system Production-ready A Microsoft 365 organisation wants approvals and automations around SharePoint, Outlook and Teams.

   483 readers a month Commercial
7. 7
   Workato Workato

   Workato connects apps, data, workflows, and AI agents on one enterprise platform to securely orchestrate, automate, and govern work.

   Complete system Production-ready A larger company wants business and IT teams to build governed integrations across many enterprise apps.

   343 readers a month Since 2013 Commercial
8. 8
   Camunda Camunda

   Camunda is the open platform for agentic orchestration. Coordinate AI agents, people, and systems across end-to-end processes with governance and control.

   Framework or platform Production-ready An engineering team wants business processes modelled in BPMN and executed reliably at scale.

   338 readers a month Since 2013 Commercial
9. 9
   Automation Anywhere Automation Anywhere

   The industry's most advanced, most deployed agentic process automation system combines the power of AI, Automation, and RPA to deliver secure end-to-end enterprise agentic automation for mission-critical processes.

   Framework or platform Production-ready An enterprise wants browser-based RPA development and cloud-managed bots as an alternative to UiPath.

   315 readers a month Since 2003 Commercial
10. 10
    n8n Cloud n8n GmbH

    n8n is a workflow automation platform that uniquely combines AI capabilities with business process automation, giving technical teams the flexibility of code with the speed of no-code.

    Complete system Production-ready A technical team wants flexible automations with code when needed, and the option to self-host the same workflows later.

    Commercial
11. 11
    Blue Prism SS&C Technologies

    SS&C Blue Prism fuels the world’s top businesses with agentic automation that’s trusted, tested and ready to run. Leaders in Agentic AI, RPA & BPM

    Framework or platform Production-ready A bank or regulated enterprise wants tightly governed, IT-controlled automation.

    194 readers a month Since 2001 Commercial
12. 12
    AWS Step Functions Amazon Web Services

    AWS Step Functions lets you orchestrate multiple AWS services into serverless workflows so that you can build and update applications quickly.

    Building block Production-ready Your application runs on AWS and you need to orchestrate serverless steps with retries and visual tracing.

    Commercial
13. 13
    Pega Platform Pegasystems

    The world’s most influential organizations trust Pega to reimagine work - automating workflows, personalizing customer experiences, and modernizing legacy systems.

    Framework or platform Production-ready A large regulated organisation needs complex case workflows and next-best-action decisioning.

    Commercial
14. 14
    MuleSoft Anypoint Platform Salesforce, Inc.

    Framework or platform Production-ready A large enterprise wants an API-led integration architecture across many systems and has integration developers.

    Commercial
15. 15
    Boomi Boomi

    Turn complexity into endless possibility with Boomi, a single platform that integrates applications, APIs, data, and AI agents.

    Framework or platform Production-ready A midsize or larger company wants low-code integration between ERP, CRM and other systems.

    9 readers a month Commercial
16. 16
    Make Celonis

    Automate your work. Make allows you to visually build, scale and automate AI and agentic workflows. User friendly no-code integration tool. Try it now for free!

    Complete system Production-ready You want more complex automations than Zapier at lower cost and are comfortable with a visual flow editor.

    Commercial
17. 17
    Tray.ai Tray.ai

    Tray.ai is the AI-native enterprise iPaaS for building AI agents, governing Model Context Protocol (MCP), and integrating 700+ apps — orchestration for data…

    Complete system Production-ready A technical operations team needs flexible integrations beyond Zapier with enterprise controls.

    Commercial
18. 18
    Pipedream Pipedream

    Managed auth and 10,000+ tools across 3,000+ APIs for the agents you

    Building block Production-ready Developers want to give their app or AI agent authenticated access to many third-party APIs without building each OAuth flow.

    Commercial
19. 19
    Temporal Cloud Temporal Technologies

    Temporal Cloud is the easiest way to run Temporal for your applications, without hassle and with peace of mind. Talk to an expert today!

    Building block Production-ready Engineers need reliable long-running workflows like payments or provisioning and do not want to operate the Temporal cluster.

    Commercial
20. 20
    Astronomer Astronomer

    Apache Airflow® orchestrates the world’s data, ML, and AI pipelines. Astro is the best way to build, run, and observe them at scale.

    Building block Production-ready A data team runs Airflow and wants it hosted and supported rather than operating it themselves.

    Commercial

New open-source projects

1. 1
   Droidline KnifeLemon

   Android automation from code. Test your apps on real phones, script the tasks you repeat, run a shelf of phones, or let an AI agent use one, from Python, Node.js, the CLI, HTTP or Appium clients. No ADB, no USB cable, no root.

   Developer tool Experimental You want to test apps on real phones, script repeated phone tasks or let an AI agent use a phone without cabling.

   ★ 445 MIT Go Active, pushed 3 days ago
2. 2
   ApprovaPlat feng-shan-jian

   基于 RuoYi Vue 3版本以及Flowable 8、Spring Boot 4 的开源流程中台。完全为爱发电，如果有用的上的地方，可以点点小⭐。（目前开源部分仅为实习中自己开发应用的技术基座，非实际设计的产品版本，仅作为技术参考使用，但后续出现问题会不断维护参考，提升框架通用性）

   Template or starter Experimental You are building a Chinese-style approval platform on RuoYi and want a reference implementation.

   ★ 251 MIT Java Active, pushed 21 days ago
3. 3
   OpenBrowser sheying2013

   本地指纹浏览器 · 多环境隔离 · 代理 / 指纹 / 同步 / RPA

   Complete system Experimental You legitimately manage many separate accounts, for example for ad or store operations, and need isolated profiles.

   ★ 780 MIT JavaScript Active, pushed 8 days ago

Open-source workflow automation tools

Complete systems you can adopt 4

1. 1
   Huginn huginn

   Create agents that monitor and act on your behalf. Your agents are standing by!

   Complete system Production-ready You want IFTTT-style monitoring and automations on your own server and are comfortable with Rails.

   ★ 50k MIT Ruby Active, pushed today
2. 2
   Kestra kestra-io

   Orchestrate everything, everywhere. The open-source control plane for workflows across data, infrastructure, business processes and AI agents. Declarative YAML, event-driven, any language, Git-versioned, scalable to millions of executions.

   Complete system Production-ready You need Airflow-class orchestration but want YAML flows, any language, and a UI non-Python people can use.

   ★ 30k Apache-2.0 Java Active, pushed today
3. 3
   Skyvern Skyvern-AI

   Automate browser based workflows with AI

   Complete system Usable You need to automate tasks across many websites without APIs, such as portals, quotes or applications, and selector-based scripts keep breaking.

   ★ 23k AGPL-3.0 Python Active, pushed today
4. 4
   Toonflow-app HBAI-Ltd

   短剧、漫剧制作工具 Toonflow：开源 AI 视频创作平台，集成剧本创作、智能分镜、角色与场景资产管理、图像生成和视频生成。融合无限画布、AI Agent 与可视化工作流，支持本地部署、自选模型、跨平台客户端、MCP 与插件扩展。Open-source AI short drama and motion comic creation tool with an infinite canvas, AI agents, storyboarding, image and video generation. Self-hosted and extensible, with a canvas-based approach similar to LibTV and TapNow.

   Complete system Experimental You produce short AI video or comic content and want a self-hosted pipeline where you pick your own models.

   ★ 20k MIT Vue Active, pushed today

Frameworks and platforms to build on 4

1. 1
   Airflow apache

   Apache Airflow - A platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows

   Framework or platform Production-ready A data team needs a standard batch scheduler with broad integrations and hiring familiarity.

   ★ 47k Apache-2.0 Python Active, pushed today
2. 2
   Dapr dapr

   Dapr is a portable runtime for building distributed applications across cloud and edge, combining event-driven architecture with workflow orchestration.

   Framework or platform Production-ready You build microservices in several languages on Kubernetes and want portable building blocks instead of vendor SDKs.

   ★ 26k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
3. 3
   Prefect PrefectHQ

   Prefect is a workflow orchestration framework for building resilient data pipelines in Python.

   Framework or platform Production-ready Your data team writes Python and wants something lighter and more Pythonic than Airflow.

   ★ 24k Apache-2.0 Python Active, pushed today
4. 4
   Node-RED node-red

   Low-code programming for event-driven applications

   Framework or platform Production-ready You need to glue IoT devices, APIs and automations together quickly, at home or in industry.

   ★ 24k Apache-2.0 JavaScript Active, pushed 7 days ago

Building blocks for your own system 2

1. 1
   Conductor conductor-oss

   Conductor is an event driven agentic workflow engine providing durable and highly resilient execution engine for applications and AI Agents

   Building block Production-ready You orchestrate many services across languages and prefer workflows defined as data with a UI over workflows written as code.

   ★ 32k Apache-2.0 Java Active, pushed today
2. 2
   Temporal temporalio

   Temporal service

   Building block Production-ready Your system has long-running or multi-step processes like payments, provisioning or agents that must not lose progress.

   ★ 24k MIT Go Active, pushed today

All 113 open-source workflow automation projects

Compared head to head

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Open-source licenses

• Permissive: 96. Use it anywhere, including in closed products. You keep the copyright notice; Apache-2.0 also grants patent rights.
• Network copyleft: 9. Like GPL, and running a changed version as a web service counts as distributing it, so its users get the source too.
• Strong copyleft: 5. If you distribute the program or anything built on it, you must release the whole source under the same license.
• Weak copyleft: 3. Changes to the licensed files must be shared, but you can link them into a closed program.

Languages

Python 34, TypeScript 22, Go 15, Java 14, JavaScript 11, PHP 4, Vue 3, C# 3, Ruby 2, Shell 2, Groovy 1, Rust 1 and HTML 1.