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 Skeptic
Knows that "7,000 integrations" counts connectors nobody maintains, that "unlimited workflows" says nothing about the tasks each run consumes, and that "no-code" ends at the first API without a connector. Reads for what counts as a task, how long failed runs are kept, which model an "AI agent" step sends data to, and whether the workflows can leave the platform at all.
Camunda
This judge's pick
Flowable
Criterion by criterion
Process design, forms & approvals
Camunda
Full BPMN 2.0 with exclusive, parallel and inclusive gateways, native escalation and compensation, human tasks as a first-class element, a form builder, a Tasklist component and token-flow simulation are all documented. We found no public information on versioning of a process with instances in flight, substitutes, or four-eyes approval rules, so the evidence reaches a strong notation tool but not a fully governed process asset.
Flowable
The homepage documents BPMN, CMMN and DMN as the modelling notation, with case management offering "dynamic routing and escalation" and agents kept "with people in the loop" — a real documented notation, which counts. We found no public information on forms with validation, approval steps with substitutes, versioning of processes already running, or a task inbox, so the evidence stops partway toward a fully governed design.
Connectors, API & on-premise reach
Camunda
Named connectors include SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, ServiceNow and AWS, with REST, GraphQL, SOAP, gRPC, AMQP and Kafka protocol templates, inbound webhooks, and an open-source Connector SDK for custom connectors that can run in a self-managed cluster. We found no public information on database connectors, DATEV, ELO or d.velop connectors, connector changelogs, or per-connector rate limits, so I stop short of engineered integration.
Flowable
A catalogue of 30 connectors organised by category, with named entries such as Salesforce, SharePoint, ABBYY, Apache Camel and RPA Framework, each flagged free or paid — catalogue level, honestly stated. We found no public information on the triggers and actions of each connector, a generic HTTP or webhook step, a public API to start or query workflows, or any on-premise agent, and no connector to a DACH ERP or accounting system appears among the named ones.
Execution, error handling & monitoring
Camunda
The pages document automatic capture of every execution and exception with real-time visibility, an Operate view of process instances including model calls and tokens used, and an Optimize component for monitoring. We found no public information on automatic retries, replay from a failing step, failure alerts, execution-history retention, runtime limits or a status page — and the SLAs mentioned are 24x7 support SLAs, not service credits.
Flowable
The homepage claims "100% Traceable — every decision, step, and override logged for full audit and replay" plus a billion events per day, which speaks to logging and throughput at marketing level. We found no public information on retries or error paths, failure alerting, runtime or rate limits, execution history retention per plan, or a status page with incident history.
Governance, credentials & audit trail
Camunda
An automatic audit trail of every step and decision path, an Identity component, policies and approvals built into the process, and a published SOC 2 Type 2 audit covering Security and Availability are documented. We found no public information on role-based permissions, customer SSO, credential storage, separate environments, or exportable audit records, so the evidence proves execution audit but not change control — and a works council cannot see what the trail records about individuals.
Flowable
"Every decision traceable, every action logged. Answer any regulator with a complete record", runtime policy enforcement over what each agent may do, and a privacy notice stating server logs are erased after 30 days with operational data kept 3–12 months. We found no public information on roles and permissions, SSO, where connection credentials are stored, separate environments with publishing approval, or an exportable audit trail describing what it records about individual users.
Hosting options & portability
Camunda
A self-managed production edition under a published Zeebe Community License 1.1 — described as source-available rather than open source, with proprietary licences available — plus BPMN 2.0 XML export and portability claims across runtimes, with the SaaS console and modeler hosted in the EU. We found no public information on system requirements for self-hosting, Git versioning of definitions, or a documented migration path between cloud and self-managed in either direction.
Flowable
A free download of engines built on BPMN, CMMN and DMN, described as "portable by design, no vendor lock-in" — definitions in an open standard other engines can read is the strongest portability signal on the evidence. We found no public information on the engine's licence terms, system requirements for self-hosting, named cloud regions, or a documented migration path between the vendor cloud and self-hosted operation.
European sovereignty
Camunda
Camunda Services GmbH of Berlin is the operating entity, GDPR controller and registered German company with an external data protection officer for German data subjects, and standard contractual clauses are cited for transfers; the same privacy policy states personal data is processed outside the EEA including the USA. We found no public information on where workflow executions and their payloads are stored, a data processing agreement for Service Data — which the privacy policy explicitly excludes — or platform subprocessors including AI providers, the ones named being marketing and billing tools.
Flowable
Flowable AG of Zurich is the named controller, Flowable Deutschland GmbH serves as the Article 27 GDPR representative with a registered German and Polish entity, and the privacy notice admits third-country transfers covered by standard contractual clauses or binding corporate rules. The captured pages name only website analytics subprocessors (Google Ireland, Salesforce Pardot in the USA); we found no public information on where workflows execute, where execution logs with payloads are stored, a data processing agreement for the platform, or which AI provider serves the paid GenAI connector.
Pricing transparency
Camunda
The free tier is concrete — permanent free modeling for up to five users, a 30-day trial never billed during or after, and free self-managed development use — but both Enterprise tiers, SaaS and self-managed, are quote-only via sales. We found no public information on the billing unit, allowances, overage prices or add-on costs for any paid tier, so a buyer cannot compute a monthly cost from these pages alone.
Flowable
The only cost signals are a free trial, a free open-source download, and connector pages that separate free connectors from paid ones — ABBYY, GenAI, Salesforce and Sharepoint — without naming a single price. We found no public information on tier prices, the billing unit, allowances per tier, overage rates or self-hosted licensing, so a buyer cannot compute anything 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.