Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Activepieces Cloud

n8n is a workflow automation platform for technical teams that combines a visual workflow builder with the ability to add custom code. It supports hundreds of integrations and can also be used to build AI-powered automations and agent-style workflows.

Key Features

• Visual, node-based workflow editor with triggers, actions, and branching logic
• Code steps for custom logic (JavaScript and Python) and extensibility via custom nodes
• Large integration ecosystem (hundreds of connectors) plus reusable workflow templates
• Webhooks and API-based automation for event-driven workflows
• AI-native tooling to build AI agent workflows and connect to your own data/models
• Enterprise-oriented capabilities such as RBAC, audit logs, and SSO options (deployment dependent)

Use Cases

• Automate business processes across SaaS tools (CRM updates, ticket routing, notifications)
• Build internal integrations and data sync pipelines between systems using APIs and webhooks
• Orchestrate AI-assisted workflows such as enrichment, summarization, and agent-driven tasks

Limitations and Considerations

• Licensed under a fair-code model (source-available), which may restrict certain commercial use cases
• Some advanced enterprise features depend on the chosen edition and deployment setup

n8n is a strong fit for teams that want low-code speed without giving up the control and flexibility of writing code. It works well for both simple automations and more complex, integration-heavy workflows.

Activepieces is an automation platform for building and running workflows that connect apps, APIs, and internal systems. It combines a no-code builder with developer-friendly extensibility, including a TypeScript “pieces” framework and AI-oriented capabilities.

Key Features

• Visual workflow builder with branching, loops, and retries
• Webhook triggers and a generic HTTP step for integrating any REST API
• Code steps with JavaScript and support for installing npm packages
• Extensible “pieces” integration framework written in TypeScript
• Flow versioning and the ability to restore previous versions
• Templates, branding options, and controls over which integrations appear in the builder
• Built-in interfaces for human input/approval patterns (for example, forms or chat-style inputs)
• AI features to assist with code generation and AI-first automation patterns, including MCP-focused tooling

Use Cases

• Automate business processes across teams (sales, finance, HR, marketing)
• Build reliable API-driven workflows for internal tools using webhooks and HTTP requests
• Create custom integrations as reusable “pieces” and standardize automations across an organization

Activepieces is a strong fit for teams that want a Zapier-style automation experience with the flexibility to build and maintain custom integrations in TypeScript, while also supporting AI-assisted automation workflows.

Windmill is an open-source developer platform for building internal tools, APIs, background jobs, and workflows by turning scripts into reusable building blocks. It provides auto-generated UIs, webhooks, and scheduling so teams can ship operational automation and apps quickly while keeping execution and access control on their own infrastructure.

Key Features

• Turn scripts into APIs, webhooks, scheduled jobs, and shareable auto-generated UIs
• Low-code workflow editor to compose scripts into multi-step flows
• App builder for creating richer internal UIs on top of scripts and workflows
• Multi-language script support (notably Python, TypeScript, Go, Bash, SQL, and GraphQL)
• Built-in secrets/variables management with workspace-level encryption for stored credentials
• Sandboxed execution using nsjail for stronger isolation in multi-tenant deployments
• Git-based development workflows via CLI and repository synchronization
• PostgreSQL-backed job orchestration with stateless API and scalable workers

Use Cases

• Building internal tools (admin panels, ops dashboards, backoffice utilities)
• Automating operational workflows (scheduled maintenance tasks, data syncs, incident runbooks)
• Exposing controlled internal APIs and webhooks backed by scripts

Limitations and Considerations

• Some distribution binaries/images may include non-open components; fully open-source builds come from compiling the repository sources
• Community Edition includes limits on certain enterprise features (for example, SSO user limits)

Windmill fits teams that want a script-first approach to internal tooling and automation with a fast workflow engine and a built-in UI layer. It combines developer-friendly coding with low-code composition to scale from quick scripts to production-grade orchestrated workflows.

Automatisch is a workflow automation tool (an open-source alternative to Zapier) that lets you connect different apps and services to automate business processes. It is designed for teams that want no-code automation while keeping control of where data is stored.

Key Features

• No-code/low-code builder for creating multi-step workflows
• Connectors to integrate multiple third-party services in a single automation
• Self-hosted deployment to keep automation data within your own environment
• Web-based UI for managing workflows, connections, and execution
• Community Edition (AGPL) with an optional Enterprise Edition for commercial features

Use Cases

• Automate routine business processes like notifications, data sync, and approvals
• Build internal integrations between chat tools, CRMs, and other SaaS systems
• Run compliance-sensitive automations where data residency and privacy matter

Limitations and Considerations

• Some functionality may differ between Community Edition and Enterprise Edition due to licensing

Automatisch is a strong fit for organizations that need flexible, app-to-app automation without relying on proprietary automation clouds. It combines a web UI with self-hosting to support privacy-focused, customizable workflows.

µTask is a lightweight automation engine for cloud workflows. It models business processes in YAML and executes them with a PostgreSQL backend. It emphasizes simplicity, security through encryption, and extensibility via Go-based plugins.

Key Features

• Requires only a PostgreSQL database to operate
• All data is encrypted and visible only to authorized users
• Workflow definitions are expressed in declarative YAML
• Extensible: developers can implement custom actions in Go
• Asynchronous execution with an auditable, encrypted state trail

Use Cases

• Kubernetes ingress TLS certificate provisioning workflow
• New team member bootstrap and onboarding automation
• Payments API asynchronous processing with risk checks and human-in-the-loop

Conclusion µTask offers a practical YAML-driven automation engine for cloud workflows, with PostgreSQL persistence and a pluggable Go-based action layer. It provides a Docker-based quickstart and a graphical dashboard to monitor tasks.

Source: µTask README on GitHub

AutoKitteh is a developer platform for workflow automation and orchestration, focused on durable execution for long-running and reliable workflows. It provides an API-first runtime to deploy, trigger, run, and manage code-based automations with built-in integrations.

Key Features

• Durable execution with automatic recovery for long-running workflows
• Code-based workflows (primarily Python; also supports Starlark)
• API-first platform with gRPC and HTTP interfaces
• Triggers via webhooks and schedulers
• Built-in integrations (e.g., Slack, GitHub, Gmail, Google Calendar, Twilio, and LLM providers)
• Operational tooling for management, monitoring, and debugging via Web UI, CLI, and a VS Code extension

Use Cases

• Automating internal business processes and backend workflows
• DevOps/FinOps/MLOps automation with resilient, auditable executions
• Building and operating AI-assisted automations and agents using existing integrations

Limitations and Considerations

• JavaScript support is listed as coming soon, so language support may be incomplete depending on your needs

AutoKitteh fits teams that want the flexibility of writing automation logic in code while still getting a managed workflow runtime with durability, triggers, integrations, and operational controls. It is especially suitable for critical workflows where reliability and recoverability matter.

github-ntfy (ntfy_alerts) is a lightweight notifier that watches GitHub repositories and Docker Hub images for new releases and forwards release events to notification endpoints. It is implemented in Rust for performance and can run as a standalone binary or inside a Docker container.

Key Features

• Monitors GitHub releases and Docker Hub image updates and detects new releases
• Sends notifications to ntfy and Gotify, and supports Discord and Slack webhooks
• Implemented in Rust (v2 rewrite) to reduce resource usage and improve performance
• Configurable via environment variables; supports a Docker image (published image and container examples provided)
• Supports GitHub authentication via token; requires repo, read:org and read:user permissions when using authenticated queries
• Provides a CLI/binary for manual runs and supports running as a long-lived container

Use Cases

• Send automated release notifications from GitHub repositories to team channels and notification systems
• Track Docker Hub image updates and notify operators when new images are published
• Integrate release alerts into lightweight alerting pipelines or home-lab notification stacks

Limitations and Considerations

• Configuration is primarily environment-variable driven; no web-based onboarding or management UI is provided
• Notification targets are limited to the supported backends (ntfy, Gotify, Discord, Slack); additional integrations are listed as TODO
• Requires a GitHub token with specific scopes for repository and organization access when authenticated monitoring is used

github-ntfy is suited for users who need a simple, efficient bridge from release sources to notification endpoints. It favors a minimal operational footprint and predictable behavior over a full-featured management interface.