activepieces vs OpenNebula

activepieces automates business workflows and app integrations for teams across HR, finance, marketing, and sales, while OpenNebula is an open-source cloud…

Best for activepieces: Business operations teams automating cross-app processes, with usage-based pricing at $5 per active flow/month and both cloud-hosted and self-hosted deployment options.
Best for OpenNebula: Infrastructure and platform teams building private, hybrid, or edge clouds who want to avoid proprietary hypervisor licensing costs, need GPU workload support via an NVIDIA partnership, or require multi-site federation across data centers.

At a Glance

 activepiecesOpenNebula
Primary categoryDevOpsDevOps
RatingNot documentedNot documented
Pricing modelFreemium (usage-based) plus a free open-source self-hosted editionOpen Source
Starting priceFree (10 active flows); $5 per active flow/month after thatFree (Community Edition); Enterprise subscriptions are custom-priced
Free planYesNot documented
Free trialNot documentedNot documented
PlatformsWebNot documented
Team collaborationNot documentedNot documented
AI featuresYesNot documented
Public APIYesNot documented

Key Differences

Product Category

activepieces: Application-layer workflow and business-process automation with prebuilt integrations.

OpenNebula: Infrastructure-layer cloud and virtualization management for VMs, GPUs, and multi-site clouds.

Buyers must recognize these solve entirely different problems before comparing price or features.

Pricing Model

activepieces: Usage-based at $5 per active flow/month (Standard), with a custom Ultimate plan.

OpenNebula: Free Community version; paid Enterprise Subscriptions are quote-based and not published.

activepieces' cost scales with automation usage, while OpenNebula's core platform is free with optional paid support layered on.

Hosting Model

activepieces: Explicitly offers both cloud-hosted and self-hosted deployment.

OpenNebula: Is infrastructure software deployed to build your own cloud; no vendor-hosted SaaS version of OpenNebula itself is documented.

OpenNebula's entire purpose is to let you run your own cloud, whereas activepieces gives you the choice of using someone else's cloud.

Specialized Workload Support

activepieces: No GPU or hypervisor-specific features are documented.

OpenNebula: Supports GPU and accelerated computing workloads through an NVIDIA partnership, plus enterprise storage integrations with NetApp, Pure Storage, and Veeam.

Organizations running compute-intensive or storage-heavy workloads need infrastructure-level support that a workflow tool can't provide.

Licensing Transparency

activepieces: Standard plan pricing is published at $5/active flow/month.

OpenNebula: Enterprise Subscription pricing is not published and is quote-based; the site content itself is also licensed CC BY-NC-SA, separate from the platform's source license.

Buyers comparing total cost of ownership need to know upfront what's published versus what requires a sales call.

Feature-by-Feature

Deployment Layer

FeatureactivepiecesOpenNebula
Application/workflow automationAvailableUnavailable
Virtual machine / hypervisor managementUnavailableAvailable
Multi-site federationNot documentedAvailable
Kubernetes orchestration alongside VMsNot documentedAvailable

Hosting & Access

FeatureactivepiecesOpenNebula
Vendor-managed cloud-hosted optionAvailableNot documented
Self-hosted optionAvailableAvailable
Open-source availabilityAvailableAvailable

Pricing & Support

FeatureactivepiecesOpenNebula
Free tierUnavailableAvailable
Published enterprise pricingAvailableUnavailable
Vendor-integrated OS subscriptionsNot documentedAvailable

Pricing Compared

Starting price reflects the lowest paid tier, not the full cost for every team size or usage level.

activepieces

Standard — Free, then $5 per active flow per month (usage-based)
Ultimate — Custom annual contract
Community Edition — Free self-hosted

OpenNebula

Community Edition — Free N/A
Enterprise Standard — Custom Annual
Enterprise Premium — Custom Annual

Pros & Cons

activepieces

Pros

  • Generous free tier: 10 active flows with unlimited runs
  • Fully free, MIT-licensed self-hosted Community Edition
  • Large integration library (700+) including modern AI tools
  • Built-in AI agent capability, not just linear automations
  • Per-flow (not per-run) pricing means high-volume automations don't get penalized

Cons

  • Per-active-flow pricing can add up for teams running many distinct workflows
  • Enterprise security/governance features require the custom-priced Ultimate plan
  • Self-hosting the Community Edition requires technical setup and maintenance

OpenNebula

Pros

  • Fully open-source core with no mandatory vendor lock-in
  • Lighter-weight and simpler to operate than OpenStack
  • Strong support for hybrid and edge cloud federation at scale
  • Proven at scale with 5,000-plus organizations and hundreds of thousands of managed cores
  • Appeals to European organizations prioritizing data sovereignty and on-premises control

Cons

  • Smaller ecosystem and community than OpenStack
  • Enterprise pricing is not published and requires a sales conversation
  • Steeper learning curve for teams new to infrastructure-as-a-service concepts
  • Fewer third-party integrations than major hyperscaler-native tools
  • Premium support tiers can be costly for small teams

Use Cases

Choose activepieces: Business operations teams automating cross-app processes, with usage-based pricing at $5 per active flow/month and both cloud-hosted and self-hosted deployment options.
Choose OpenNebula: Infrastructure and platform teams building private, hybrid, or edge clouds who want to avoid proprietary hypervisor licensing costs, need GPU workload support via an NVIDIA partnership, or require multi-site federation across data centers.
Need both: An organization running its own private cloud on OpenNebula for cost and control reasons might separately deploy activepieces on top of that infrastructure to automate business workflows - the two tools would coexist at different layers rather than compete.

activepieces

  • Sales operations automation — Automate lead routing and CRM syncing across sales tools.
  • Support ticket automation — Route and respond to support tickets automatically across channels.
  • Internal IT/ops workflows — Automate recurring internal processes across IT and operations tooling.
  • Building AI agents — Create AI agents that autonomously execute tasks with optional human approval.

OpenNebula

  • Telecom and service provider clouds — Telecom operators build private and edge clouds on OpenNebula to manage distributed infrastructure at scale.
  • Research and HPC infrastructure — Universities and research institutions use OpenNebula to self-manage HPC and cloud infrastructure without hyperscaler dependence.
  • OpenStack alternative for data center virtualization — Enterprises seeking a lighter-weight alternative to OpenStack use OpenNebula for private cloud and data center virtualization.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do activepieces and OpenNebula compete for the same budget?

Not directly - activepieces is business workflow automation software, while OpenNebula is infrastructure software for building private/hybrid clouds; they typically sit in different parts of an IT budget.

Is OpenNebula free?

A Community version is available at no cost; paid Enterprise Subscriptions with additional services also exist but aren't publicly priced.

Does activepieces manage cloud infrastructure like OpenNebula?

No, activepieces automates application workflows and integrations; it doesn't manage virtual machines, hypervisors, or GPU infrastructure the way OpenNebula does.

Can OpenNebula run GPU workloads?

Yes, OpenNebula supports GPU and accelerated computing workloads through an NVIDIA partnership, a capability not documented for activepieces.

How is activepieces priced compared to OpenNebula?

activepieces uses published usage-based pricing at $5 per active flow/month; OpenNebula's core Community version is free, with Enterprise Subscription pricing available only by quote.

Read the full activepieces review · Read the full OpenNebula review