First, Is n8n Open Source?

Not in the usual sense. The n8n repository is public and the software can be self-hosted at no cost, but its licence file uses the Sustainable Use License, a source-available licence that n8n calls fair-code. It allows use and modification only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial or personal use, and files marked .ee need a separate enterprise licence. For a company automating its own processes that is often fine. For an agency hosting workflows for clients, or a product that embeds n8n, the licence needs a careful read or a commercial agreement. That gap is why teams look for alternatives under an OSI-approved licence.

Activepieces: The Closest Like-for-Like Replacement

Activepieces is a visual, no-code flow builder in the same family as n8n and Zapier. Its licence places everything outside the enterprise directories under the MIT licence; the enterprise code has its own terms. Integrations, called pieces, are TypeScript npm packages; the README lists more than 200, says most were contributed by the community, and says every piece can also be exposed to LLM clients as an MCP server. Self-hosting uses Docker with PostgreSQL and Redis. It is actively released, with version 0.92.3 published on 12 October 2026. For business users who want n8n's style of builder under a permissive licence, this is the first one to try.

Node-RED and Huginn: Mature, Permissive, Lightweight

Node-RED is Apache 2.0 licensed and has a long history in IoT and industrial automation. It runs comfortably on small hardware, has a large catalogue of community nodes and works well for event-driven glue between devices, APIs and messaging. Its editor is more technical than Activepieces. Huginn is MIT licensed and older still: agents that watch websites, feeds and APIs, then act on what they find. Both are reliable choices when the licence must be simple and the users are technical.

Code-First Options for Developers

If workflows are written by developers rather than business users, a different group fits better. Kestra (Apache 2.0) defines flows in YAML with hundreds of plugins and is strong for data pipelines and scheduling; role-based access control and governance features sit in its paid Enterprise Edition. Trigger.dev (Apache 2.0) and Temporal (MIT) are durable-execution frameworks for long-running background jobs written in code, not visual builders. Windmill turns scripts into flows and internal apps, but read its licence closely: the source is mostly AGPLv3, while the official Community Edition images and binaries also contain proprietary code that may be used free of charge but not sold, resold or run as a managed service without an agreement. Building from source without the enterprise flag gives a purely AGPLv3 binary.

For AI Agent Workflows

Langflow (MIT) is a visual builder for LLM chains, agents and retrieval pipelines, and is actively maintained. Dify is popular but uses a modified Apache 2.0 licence that forbids running a multi-tenant service and removing its logo from the frontend without permission, which puts it in a similar position to n8n for agencies. One former favourite is no longer an option for new projects: Flowise was wound down, with its repository archived on 13 August 2026 and end of life on 31 August. Its maintainers said developers increasingly rely on coding agents for complex tasks and that rigid low-code workflows hit their limit. The Apache 2.0 code can still be forked, but nobody official maintains it.

Check Maintenance, Not Just the Licence

A permissive licence does not help if a project has stalled. Automatisch, an AGPL-3.0 Zapier alternative, is still public, but at the time of writing its latest release dates from August 2025 and its latest commit from January 2026. Before choosing any tool, look at recent releases and commits, open security issues, and whether the features you need sit in the open-source core or in an enterprise directory. Single sign-on, audit logs and fine-grained permissions are commonly reserved for paid editions.

What the Licence Means in Practice

MIT and Apache 2.0 (Activepieces' core, Node-RED, Huginn, Kestra, Trigger.dev, Temporal, Langflow) allow commercial use, modification and hosting for clients, as long as notices are kept. AGPLv3 (Automatisch, Windmill built from source) also allows commercial use, but if you modify the software and let users interact with it over a network, you must offer them your modified source. Source-available licences such as n8n's and Dify's are free for many internal uses but restrict hosting for others or competing services. None of this is legal advice; read the licence file in the exact version you deploy, because projects change licences.

Self-Hosting Is the Easy Part

Most of these tools start with a single Docker or Docker Compose command, and a small VPS is enough for light workloads. The real work is operational: putting the instance behind HTTPS so external webhooks can reach it, storing credentials for connected apps securely, backing up the database that holds flows and run history, updating regularly, and deciding who is alerted when a scheduled flow fails silently. Plan those before the first production workflow, not after.

The Bottom Line

If you want n8n's experience under a permissive licence, start with Activepieces. If the users are engineers, Kestra, Node-RED or Windmill may fit better, depending on the licence terms you can accept. For LLM agents, Langflow is the maintained open-source choice now that Flowise has been archived. Whichever you pick, choose by licence, maintenance and the operations you can sustain, not by the length of the integrations list. ZaidanLab's AI automation work builds workflows on whichever of these tools fits the client's licence and hosting constraints.