ActivePieces
startupOpen-source, AI-first workflow automation and a Zapier alternative.
Activepieces is the company behind the open-source workflow-automation platform of the same name, first released in 2022 and positioned as a self-hostable alternative to Zapier. The company went through the Y Combinator accelerator and is headquartered in San Francisco. Its Community Edition is open-source under the MIT license, with a separate commercial Enterprise Edition.
Our Take
We shortlist Activepieces for clients who need an MIT-licensed, self-hostable automation engine. The honest caveat is the small core team: for an unusual integration you write TypeScript rather than file a vendor ticket. — Rafal Fila, ShadowGen
What Sets ActivePieces Apart
Activepieces pairs a permissive MIT license, more liberal than the source-available licenses used by some competitors, with an integration catalogue that outside contributors can extend, making it a genuine option for teams with strict licensing or resale requirements.
Key Achievements
About ActivePieces
Activepieces builds an open-source workflow-automation platform that combines a visual flow builder with an open contributor model. The product is built around "pieces," its term for integrations: each piece bundles the triggers and actions for one service and is published as a TypeScript npm package. The company reports that a majority of pieces are community-contributed rather than vendor-built, which is the platform's main structural difference from proprietary competitors whose connector libraries only a vendor can extend.
The company operates an open-core model. The Community Edition is free and open-source under the permissive MIT license and is intended to be self-hosted; Activepieces Cloud is a managed offering with a free tier and usage-based paid plans; and the Enterprise Edition adds governance features such as single sign-on, role-based access control, and white-labelling under a commercial license. From 2024 onward Activepieces leaned into AI agent use cases, exposing a large share of its piece catalogue as Model Context Protocol servers so the same integrations can be called by AI agents.