As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Camunda 2.5/5 and Flowable 2/5 in Workflow Management. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick Camunda and 1 picks Flowable. Camunda scores higher on 6 of 6 criteria (Connectors, API & on-premise reach, Process design, forms & approvals, European sovereignty, plus 3 more). Provenance — Camunda: EU-Made; Flowable: UK / wider Europe. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
Camunda leads the means on process design (6.2 vs 5.2; 4 judges lean Camunda), integrations and connectors (6.3 vs 3.3; 5 lean Camunda), governance and audit (3.7 vs 3.2), sovereignty (3.5 vs 2.5; 5 lean Camunda) and pricing transparency (2.3 vs 1.3). Hosting and portability is the genuine split — 5.8 vs 5.7, 2 judges lean each way, 2 tie — and run reliability sits at 3.3 vs 3.2 with 3 ties. The judges split on totals: the integrator, ops analyst and data protection officer score Camunda 6, 5.3 and 5.7 to Flowable's 4.6, 4.4 and 4.4; the head of IT scores Flowable 4.5 to Camunda's 0; the skeptic scores Camunda 5.6 to Flowable's 0. Camunda's sovereignty attributes read legal entity jurisdiction DE and data residency EU optional, with ownership and subprocessor exposure unknown; Flowable's read unknown for each of the four. That split is the bench's answer.
Choose Camunda if
You need connectors to SAP, Oracle and ServiceNow, where 5 of the judges lean Camunda on integrations and connectors (6.3 vs 3.3).
Your legal team requires the vendor's legal entity to sit in Germany — Camunda's legal entity jurisdiction attribute reads DE.
You need data residency with an EU option, which Camunda's data residency attribute lists as EU optional.
You model in BPMN 2.0 and need token-flow simulation with native escalation and compensation, where 4 judges lean Camunda on process design.
Your auditors ask for automatic audit capture and SOC 2 Type 2, areas 4 judges credit on governance and audit (3.7 vs 3.2).
Choose Flowable if
You need a free engine download to evaluate before any sales conversation, a hosting and portability strength where 2 judges lean Flowable and the highest single score recorded is 8.
Your team builds cases in CMMN and DMN alongside BPMN, which Flowable documents with dynamic routing and escalation and 1 judge credits on process design.
You want engine definitions the vendor calls portable by design with no vendor lock-in, another hosting and portability lean (2 judges for Flowable).
Your architecture relies on a catalogue of thirty connectors across six categories, which 1 judge credits on integrations and connectors.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The Head of IT
Answers for every automation a department builds without asking. Wants SSO, separate test and production, an inventory of workflows with their owners — and an exit: definitions exportable as BPMN or documented JSON, a self-hosted edition, and an engine licence that will still apply in five years.
Camunda
Flowable
This judge's pick
Criterion by criterion
Process design, forms & approvals
Camunda
This is a BPMN shop: the modelling tool is built on the ISO-ratified BPMN 2.0 standard with gateways, escalation and compensation native, a form builder, a task list for participants, and token simulation before deploying, and the model itself is the audit trail. I found no public information on version management for processes already running — keeping in-flight instances on their original version, migrating them, diff and rollback — and substitutes for absent approvers are not documented either.
Flowable
The homepage documents modelling in BPMN, CMMN and DMN described as standards Flowable has run for fifteen-plus years, plus case management with dynamic routing and escalation and agents with people in the loop. We found no public information on forms with validation, approval steps with substitutes, versioning that keeps running instances on their original version, or a test or simulation mode before publishing.
Connectors, API & on-premise reach
Camunda
The connector catalogue is real and named: SAP and Microsoft Dynamics alongside 400-plus pre-built connectors, SOAP, REST, GraphQL, gRPC, AMQP and Kafka, inbound webhook triggers in real time, and an open-source Connector SDK for anything custom, with connectors able to run in a self-managed cluster. I found no public information on a dedicated on-premise agent reaching internal databases and file shares, on database steps as such, or on who maintains each connector — the marketplace speaks of community and partner-built connectors, and no DATEV connector appears on the captured pages.
Flowable
The connectors page shows a catalogue of thirty connectors across six categories with named entries such as Salesforce, SharePoint, ABBYY, GenAI, Apache Camel and RPA Framework, each flagged free or paid. We found no public information on documented triggers and actions per connector, a generic HTTP or webhook step, an API to start or query workflows, custom connectors, or an on-premise agent, and no DACH ERP or accounting connector is named on the captured page.
Execution, error handling & monitoring
Camunda
Every execution, exception and agent decision is captured automatically with real-time runtime visibility through Operate and monitoring via Optimize, and escalation and compensation are native BPMN error handling — that is a genuine error path. I found no public information on retries, failure alerting by email or chat, execution history retention, or a public status page with incident history; the documented SLAs are 24×7 support SLAs, not service credits.
Flowable
The homepage claims every decision, step and override is logged for full audit and replay, and the privacy notice states server logs are stored for 30 days and operational data retained three to twelve months. We found no public information on retries, error paths, failure alerting, runtime or throughput limits, monitoring export, or a status page with incident history.
Governance, credentials & audit trail
Camunda
The execution side is covered: every step is recorded automatically without extra instrumentation, every decision path is documented by definition, and a SOC 2 Type 2 audit for Security and Availability plus a Trust Center are published. But the governance I require before departments build without asking is not documented: I found no public information on SSO via SAML or OIDC, separate development, test and production environments with a publishing approval, where connection credentials are stored, or a central inventory of workflows with owners.
Flowable
Traceability is claimed strongly — every decision, step and override logged, with runtime policy enforcement over what each agent may do — which speaks to the execution trail a works council would ask about. We found no public information on user roles and permissions, SSO, where connection credentials are stored, separate development, test and production environments, SCIM, or an exportable audit trail describing what is recorded about individual users.
Hosting options & portability
Camunda
This is where the exit story is strongest: a self-managed edition exists (free for development, Enterprise licence for production), the engine's licence is published — Zeebe Community License 1.1, described as comparable to Apache License 2.0 outside the managed-service restriction, with clients and the Exporter API under Apache 2.0 — and definitions export as BPMN 2.0 XML, an ISO standard the pages call portable across vendors and runtimes. I found no public information on documented system requirements for self-hosting, versioning definitions in Git, or a migration path between cloud and self-managed in both directions.
Flowable
The homepage describes BPMN, CMMN and DMN definitions as portable by design with no vendor lock-in, what you build stays inspectable and yours, and offers a free download alongside an Enterprise Cloud — a credible start on the exit story I need. We found no public information on the engine's licence, self-hosting system requirements, EU cloud regions, versioning in Git, or a documented migration path between cloud and self-hosted.
European sovereignty
Camunda
The contracting entity is clearly European — Camunda Services GmbH in Berlin, registered at Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, with an external German data protection officer — and the SaaS Console and Modeler are hosted in the EU with cluster regions selectable. Beyond that it thins out: no statement on where execution logs and payloads are stored, no published subprocessor list with locations (the providers named are billing and marketing tools), no data processing agreement on the captured pages, and the privacy policy states personal data is processed outside the EEA including the USA while explicitly not covering the Service Data customers submit to the products.
Flowable
The controller is Flowable AG of Zurich with Flowable Deutschland GmbH in Stuttgart named as the GDPR Article 27 representative, and standard contractual clauses or binding corporate rules are cited for transfers; the pages acknowledge third-country transfers and name a US marketing subprocessor (Salesforce Pardot). We found no public information on where workflows execute or where execution logs with their payload copies are stored, so the dimensions that matter most remain open.
Pricing transparency
Camunda
Public pricing covers only the free end: a permanent free tier for up to five users doing BPMN/DMN modelling, a free self-managed development edition with no licence required, a 30-day trial that is never billed, and a free full-feature licence for qualifying non-commercial initiatives. Everything production — SaaS and self-managed alike — is a quote via sales, with no billing unit, allowance or overage published, so a buyer cannot compute a monthly cost from these pages.
Flowable
The captured pages show a free download edition, a free trial, and per-connector free-versus-paid flags, but we found no public information on monetary prices for paid tiers, the billing unit and what counts as one, allowances, or the cost of premium connectors, so a buyer cannot compute a monthly cost from these pages.
Sovereignty, side by side
Dimension
Camunda
Flowable
Legal entity
Not determined
Not determined
Ownership
Not determined
Not determined
Data residency
Not determined
Not determined
Subprocessors
Not determined
Not determined
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Camunda higher: 2.5/5 against 2/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 5 of the 6 judges pick Camunda and 1 picks Flowable. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Camunda or Flowable European?
Camunda is European (EU-Made). Flowable is European (UK / wider Europe). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.
Do Camunda and Flowable have a free plan?
As of 28 Oct 2026, Camunda’s own pages state a free plan; Flowable’s pages as captured do not. Each product page links the pricing page it was read from.