Pneumaticworkflow vs WorkFlow-Engine
Pneumaticworkflow and WorkFlow-Engine are both BPM and BPMN engine software. Pneumaticworkflow is open source under Apache-2.0, with 320 GitHub stars. WorkFlow-Engine is open source under GPL-3.0, with 865 GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Pneumaticworkflow when
- A small or mid-size team wants a self-hosted checklist-style process tool rather than a full BPM suite.
- Pick WorkFlow-Engine when
- You are building office automation for Chinese public-sector organisations that need domestic software compliance.
Side by side
A workflow tool for running repeatable team processes such as onboarding and approvals from templates, with task assignment and human-in-the-loop steps.
A Flowable-based workflow platform from Risesoft for government and enterprise approval processes, built on Spring Cloud, Kafka and Elasticsearch.
Open-sourced only in late 2024, and self-hosting needs Postgres, Redis and RabbitMQ.
GPL license, no releases, Chinese-only documentation and a heavy microservice stack.
Usable (both)
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Self-hosted server
Python, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, Redis and RabbitMQ
Java, Spring Cloud, Flowable, Vue, Kafka and Elasticsearch
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive)
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
320 GitHub stars
865 GitHub stars
Established: started 2 years ago, latest release v7.3.2.
Established: started 2 years ago, no tagged release yet.
Other comparisons
More BPM suites and BPMN workflow engines
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.