Curated List of Awesome Open-Source Workflow Engines
This article presents a comprehensive, categorized list of open-source workflow engines and BPM suites, describing each project's purpose, language, and typical use cases for tasks such as DAG scheduling, Kubernetes orchestration, and microservice coordination.
Complete Products
Airflow – A Python‑based platform for running tasks as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs).
Argo – An open‑source container‑native workflow engine for executing jobs on Kubernetes.
Azkaban – A batch workflow scheduler originally built at LinkedIn for Hadoop jobs.
Brigade – A tool that runs scripts and automates tasks in the cloud as part of a Kubernetes cluster.
Cadence – An orchestration engine from Uber Engineering for executing long‑running asynchronous business logic.
CloudSlang – A workflow engine that automates DevOps use cases.
Conductor – Netflix’s cloud‑native orchestration engine.
Copper – A high‑performance Java workflow engine.
Cromwell – A Scala‑written workflow engine that runs workflows defined in WDL or CWL.
Cylc – An engine for orchestrating complex distributed workflows using cyclic or acyclic graphs, originally designed for weather forecasting.
Digdag – A simple tool for building, running, scheduling, and monitoring complex task pipelines.
Fission Workflows – A high‑performance workflow engine for serverless functions on Kubernetes.
Flor – A workflow engine written in Ruby.
Imixs‑Workflow – A powerful, human‑centric workflow engine based on the BPMN 2.0 standard.
Kiba – A Ruby data‑processing and ETL framework.
Mistral – A workflow service built on OpenStack.
Oozie – Hadoop’s workflow scheduler.
Pegasus – Automates, recovers, and debugs scientific computing pipelines.
Pinball – A scalable workflow manager used at Pinterest.
Piper – A distributed Java workflow engine designed for simplicity.
RunDeck – A job scheduler and run‑book automation tool.
Titanoboa – A platform for creating complex workflows on the JVM.
Wexflow – A high‑performance, scalable, modular, cross‑platform workflow engine.
Workflow Core – A lightweight workflow engine for the .NET Standard.
Workflow Engine – A lightweight .NET and Java workflow engine.
Zeebe – A workflow engine for microservice orchestration that executes BPMN models developed by the Camunda team.
BPM Suites
Activiti – A leading lightweight, Java‑centric open‑source BPMN engine supporting real‑world process automation.
Activiti Cloud – The next‑generation business‑automation platform offering cloud‑native building blocks for distributed infrastructures.
Flowable – A compact, efficient open‑source business‑process engine providing BPM platforms for developers, administrators, and business users.
jBPM – A lightweight, extensible workflow engine written in pure Java that implements the BPMN 2.0 specification.
SAAS
Bip.io – Network automation for humans and robots.
Zenaton – A workflow engine offering data‑processing and background‑job capabilities for PHP, Node.js, Python, and Ruby.
Embedded Libraries
Camunda – A Java library and fully‑featured product for workflow and decision automation.
Captain – A lightweight, distributed Java workflow engine for microservice architectures.
Luigi – A Python module that helps build complex pipelines of batch jobs.
Viewflow – A reusable workflow library for organizing collaborative business logic in Django applications.
Workflow Core – A lightweight workflow engine for the .NET Standard.
For business‑process approval, choose Flowable. For job orchestration, choose Oozie or Airflow (Hadoop jobs → Oozie; other job types → Airflow). For microservice orchestration, choose Cadence or Zeebe. Which one will you pick?
Original source: https://github.com/meirwah/awesome-workflow-engines
Article: https://pub.intelligentx.net/curated-list-awesome-open-source-workflow-engines
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