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 Process Owner
Runs purchase approvals and invoice release for a 400-person Mittelstand company. Wants approvers set by role rather than by name, a substitute when someone is on holiday, deadlines that escalate, and a process change that does not break the forty requests already in flight.
Camunda
This judge's pick
Flowable
Criterion by criterion
Process design, forms & approvals
Camunda
BPMN 2.0 modelling with parallel branches, native escalation and compensation patterns, first-class human tasks, a form builder, a task list component and token-flow simulation are all documented, which covers most of an approval process with deadlines. What I could not find is anything on substitutes when an approver is on holiday, or on running instances staying on their original process version when I publish a change — exactly what protects the forty requests already in flight.
Flowable
The platform is built on BPMN, CMMN and DMN with process orchestration and case management that the vendor describes with dynamic routing and escalation, and agents with people in the loop where it matters — that is the notation level I want before trusting anyone with invoice release. We found no public information on approvers assigned by role, substitutes, four-eyes steps, forms, or what happens to the forty requests already in flight when a process is changed.
Connectors, API & on-premise reach
Camunda
Named connectors include SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics and ServiceNow, standard protocols cover REST, SOAP, gRPC and Kafka, inbound webhooks start processes in real time, and an open-source Connector SDK lets us build connectors for internal systems that run either in the vendor's cloud or in our own cluster. Ownership is visible through a marketplace of community and partner connectors plus vendor-managed runtime; I found no public information on DATEV connectors, per-connector rate limits or changelogs.
Flowable
A catalogued list of thirty connectors across six categories, with named ones for Salesforce, SharePoint, ABBYY document processing, Apache Camel and an RPA framework, shows real Microsoft and SaaS reach. We found no public information on connectors to ERP or accounting systems common in DACH, on a generic HTTP or webhook step, or on an API to start and query workflows.
Execution, error handling & monitoring
Camunda
Operate shows running process instances in real time, every execution and every exception is captured automatically, and paid tiers include 24×7 support with SLAs. I found no public information on retries, replaying a failed run from the failing step, failure alerts to my team, execution-history retention or a public status page.
Flowable
The vendor claims every decision, step and override is logged for full audit and replay, with an observability and audit trail capability and a billion events per day as a throughput claim — an execution history exists. We found no public information on retries, error paths, failure alerts, execution-history retention for the platform, or a public status page.
Governance, credentials & audit trail
Camunda
An audit trail that records every step automatically without extra instrumentation, plus a published SOC 2 Type 2 report on Security and Availability and a dedicated Identity component, gives me something to show an auditor. I found no public information on SSO, separate test and production environments with a publishing approval, SCIM, or where connector credentials are stored.
Flowable
A complete record to answer any regulator, runtime policy enforcement over what each agent may and may not do, and a privacy notice stating server logs kept thirty days and operational data three to twelve months give a works council something concrete to read. We found no public information on user roles and permissions, single sign-on, separate environments with a publishing approval, or where connection credentials are stored.
Hosting options & portability
Camunda
A self-managed edition runs on our own infrastructure (free for development, Enterprise license for production), the engine licences are published (Zeebe Community License 1.1, Apache 2.0 for clients and the Exporter API), and process definitions export as BPMN 2.0 XML that other tools can read — a real exit path for the models. I found no public information on system requirements, versioning definitions in Git, or a migration path between cloud and self-hosted in either direction.
Flowable
The engine is offered as a free download and the definitions live in BPMN, CMMN and DMN, described as portable by design with no vendor lock-in — that is the exit insurance I insist on before committing purchase approvals to a platform. We found no public information on system requirements for self-hosting, versioning of definitions in Git, or a documented migration path between cloud and self-hosted.
European sovereignty
Camunda
The contracting and operating entity is Camunda Services GmbH in Berlin with a German register number and VAT ID and an appointed data protection officer, and the SaaS Console and Modeler components are stated to be hosted in the EU with clusters creatable in other regions. The privacy policy acknowledges processing outside the EEA including the USA under standard contractual clauses, and the subprocessors it names are website tools such as Stripe and HubSpot — I found no public information on where execution logs with their payloads are stored or on the subprocessors behind execution and AI steps.
Flowable
The controller is Flowable AG in Zurich with Flowable Deutschland GmbH named as EU representative under Article 27, and the privacy notice invokes standard contractual clauses and binding corporate rules while acknowledging transfers to third countries. We found no public information on where workflows execute, where execution logs with their payloads are stored, or the subprocessors including any AI providers behind the platform — the named analytics providers concern the website only.
Pricing transparency
Camunda
The free options are clear — modelling free forever for up to five users, a 30-day execution trial that is never billed, self-managed free for non-production use — but every paid tier, SaaS or self-managed, is a sales conversation with no price published. I found no public information on a billing unit, allowances, overages or add-on costs, so I cannot compute the monthly cost of my own approval processes from public pages.
Flowable
The captured pages offer a free trial and a free download of the engine and nothing else I could put in a budget: we found no public prices for the enterprise platform, no tiers, no billing unit and no allowance. As the one who releases invoices, I 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.