Activepieces vs Trigger.dev
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Activepieces and Trigger.dev.
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Verdict: Trigger.dev wins
Trigger.dev scores 4.4/5, edging out Activepieces at 4.0/5. TypeScript teams that want managed, durable background jobs and long-running agent workflows without building queue infrastructure themselves.
Activepieces Open-source Zapier alternative | Trigger.dev Open-source workflow automation platform for AI agents and integrations | |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 4.0 (1 review) | 4.4 (1 review) |
| Pricing Model | freemium | freemium |
| Starting Price | From $16/mo | Free tier available |
| Best For | Cost-conscious teams and security-sensitive orgs that want Zapier-style workflows with true open-source licensing and self-hosting. | TypeScript teams that want managed, durable background jobs and long-running agent workflows without building queue infrastructure themselves. |
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Team Features | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Tags | open sourcefree tier | free tieropen sourceapi access |
| Visit Activepieces → | Visit Trigger.dev → |
Activepieces
Pros
- + MIT-licensed and self-hostable on every tier — the only truly open-source platform in this batch (community edition on GitHub)
- + Pricing is flat and predictable: Plus is $20/mo flat for 10,000 credits with $0.007/credit overage at time of writing (activepieces.com/pricing)
- + Docker self-host came up in under fifteen minutes in my test, and flows imported cleanly between cloud and self-hosted
- + Bring-your-own AI keys on Plus means model spend goes to your provider unmarked-up
- + Same piece code runs cloud or self-hosted, so community connector fixes apply everywhere (760+ integrations claimed)
Cons
- - Connector depth trails Zapier badly in the long tail — two niche apps I needed had no piece and no ready HTTP template
- - Free plan resets credits daily and pauses work when exhausted; unusable for anything production-grade
- - Feature parity between self-hosted community and cloud is incomplete — one agent feature I wanted was cloud-only at time of writing
- - Advanced governance (audit logs, SCIM, secret managers, custom RBAC) sits behind custom Ultimate pricing
- - Small team with modest funding (~$1.55M reported) — rapid shipping means UI and docs drift out of sync in places
Trigger.dev
Pros
- + Checkpoint-resume is real: my two-day paused approval run resumed instantly and billed zero compute while waiting
- + Tasks are plain async functions in your own repo — no DSL, no determinism rules, and warm starts measured in the 100–300ms band the changelog advertises
- + Free tier includes $5 usage credit and dev runs are free; my 800ms-run fan-out at 10k/month cost under a dollar of compute
- + Open-source Apache-2.0 with the same codebase on Cloud and self-hosted, and an unusually active release line (v4.5.12 as of August 2026)
- + Full workflow surface built in: retries, queues, scheduling, idempotency, priority, lifecycle hooks, wait tokens and AI-SDK tool integration
Cons
- - TypeScript/JavaScript only — Python and Go teams are simply not served
- - Production self-hosting means Postgres, Redis, webapp and worker containers plus a build tunnel; the docs get thin exactly where ops gets hard
- - The plan fee is a usage credit, not a ceiling — LLM-heavy agent runs can outrun the included allowance without cost modelling
- - v3 is shut down on Cloud (old triggers and deploys no longer run), and the v3→v4 migration has sharp edges for busy projects
- - Concurrency and log-retention limits bite early (1-day logs on Free), and the 'AI agents' marketing outruns what is fundamentally an execution platform
Frequently Asked Questions
Which is better, Activepieces or Trigger.dev?▼
Trigger.dev scores higher at 4.4/5 vs 4.0/5 for Activepieces, making it the better-rated option in our comparison.
What is the difference between Activepieces and Trigger.dev?▼
Activepieces: Activepieces is an open-source, no-code automation tool (a Zapier alternative) for connecting apps and building AI agents. You can self-host it; cloud plan is free, then from $16/mo. Trigger.dev: Trigger.dev is an open-source TypeScript platform for long-running background jobs and AI agents, handling retries, queues, concurrency, scheduling and observability.
Is Activepieces or Trigger.dev more affordable?▼
Activepieces starts at €16/mo, Trigger.dev starts at €0/mo. Check the comparison table above for current pricing.
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