Node-RED
AutomationA flow-based, low-code tool for wiring together devices, APIs and online services with a browser editor, built on Node.js.
Open-source alternative to:
Zapier
What the free edition leaves out
Scroll sideways to view all columns →The free edition covers the features teams usually need; we found nothing important held back. “Not confirmed” means the official pages we read did not say, so we do not guess.
| Feature | Free edition | Details | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSO / SAML | Not confirmed | The security docs describe username/password login and OAuth/OpenID through Passport strategies set in the settings file. No built-in SAML or SSO feature was described. | Source ↗ |
| Role-based access control | Free | The users setting accepts several users, each with their own permissions (for example flows.read, flows.write). This is per-user permissions, not named roles. | Source ↗ |
| Audit logs | Not confirmed | Not mentioned on the pages read. | Source ↗ |
| Multi-user / teams | Free | The editor can be set up with multiple users with different permissions. There is no per-user workspace separation in the core. | Source ↗ |
| Backups and restore | Not confirmed | Flows and settings live in files under /data (such as flows.json), so they can be copied. No dedicated backup tool was found. | Source ↗ |
| API access | Free | The admin HTTP API is part of the core runtime (admin API docs). | Source ↗ |
| Support SLA | Not confirmed | No official paid support from the project was found. FlowFuse is a separate company. | Source ↗ |
Best for
Developers and tinkerers who want a visual, event-driven tool for IoT, device and API integrations and are comfortable with JavaScript and running their own server.
Why choose it over Zapier
Apache-2.0 licensed with no paid edition of the project itself, and it runs as a single Docker container with no external database by default. Nodes and function code let you handle devices and protocols that app-to-app tools often skip.
Where it falls short
It is a programming tool more than a ready-made app connector library, so many Zapier-style integrations mean finding and trusting community nodes. Multi-user separation, SSO, audit logging and team features are limited in the core. Hosting, security and upgrades are yours to manage, and no official support was found.
Open-source alternative to
- Zapier — Node-RED can run app-to-app and API automations on your own server, so it can replace simple Zapier workflows.
JavaScript
Sass
i18next
esbuild
Node.js
Express
Passport
Mocha
ESLint
Dependabot
GitHub Actions
npm
