Best Open Source Automation Tools in 2026
Tools that let you automate repetitive workflows, integrate services, and trigger actions across applications.
The most popular pick this year is n8n with 187,518 GitHub stars, but all 8 options below are worth considering depending on your needs.
8 open source automation tools — ranked by GitHub stars. Browse all
n8n
Fair-code workflow automation platform with native AI capabilities. Combine visual building with custom code, self-host or cloud, 400+ integrations.
Make
Flowise
Flowise is an open-source, visual, low-code/no-code tool designed to help users build AI agents and sophisticated LLM-powered workflows through a drag-and-drop interface. It features a Node.js backend and a React frontend, along with modular components for integrations and API documentation—making it accessible to both developers and non-technical users.
Make
Apache Airflow
Apache Airflow - A platform to programmatically author, schedule, and monitor workflows
Zapier
Lightpanda
A headless browser built from scratch in Zig, optimised for AI agents and automation with 9x less memory and 11x faster execution than Chrome.
Playwright
Kestra
Event-driven workflow orchestration platform with a YAML-based pipeline DSL, 500+ plugins, and a built-in UI editor.
Zapier
Automa
Browser extension that automates repetitive web tasks by visually connecting blocks — no code required.
Zapier
Trigger.dev
Open-source platform for building and deploying reliable background jobs, scheduled tasks, and AI workflows in TypeScript.
Zapier
Automatisch
The open source Zapier alternative. Build workflow automation without spending time and money.
ZapierHow we rank these tools
Tools are ranked by GitHub stars as a proxy for community adoption and trust. Stars reflect how many developers found a project valuable enough to bookmark — a reasonable signal for quality in the open source world. We only list tools that are actively maintained and open source.
Looking for tools you can run yourself? Browse self-hosted automation tools →