Orkes Conductor alternative: node-flow vs Orkes

node-flow vs Orkes Conductor — a self-hosted, Conductor-compatible workflow engine with RBAC, SSO and AI tasks, free to run commercially on Postgres alone.

node-flow is a self-hosted alternative to Orkes Conductor. Orkes is the company founded by Conductor's original creators; it sells Conductor as a managed cloud and as an enterprise install. node-flow offers the same workflow model and a Conductor-compatible API as software you run yourself, on one Postgres database, with no licence fee.

Why people look for an Orkes alternative

Self-hosting without a sales process. Running node-flow in production — for a business, inside a product you sell, for your customers — needs no commercial licence, seat count or revenue threshold.
Data residency. Every workflow input, output and secret stays in your own Postgres, in your own network.
Enterprise features, included. Namespaces, RBAC with groups and tags, OIDC and SAML SSO, service accounts, mTLS, sealed secrets, audit log and quotas are part of node-flow, not a paid tier.
One dependency. Orkes' self-hosted distribution runs on a larger backend stack; node-flow needs PostgreSQL 18.

node-flow vs Orkes at a glance

	node-flow	Orkes Conductor
Workflow model	JSON DAG, Conductor-style	JSON DAG, Conductor
Hosting	Self-hosted — Docker, Kubernetes, any managed Postgres	Orkes Cloud, or enterprise self-hosted
Price	Free to run, including commercially	Commercial
Infrastructure	PostgreSQL 18 only	Managed, or a multi-store backend when self-hosted
Conductor SDKs	Supported through `/conductor/api`	Native
RBAC, SSO, audit	Included	Included in commercial plans
AI / LLM tasks	LLM text and chat, embeddings, vector indexes in Postgres, MCP, `AGENT`, guardrails	Included in Orkes' product
Human tasks	`HUMAN` tasks with an inbox in the dashboard	Included
Support	Community, or terms by agreement	Commercial support

When Orkes is the better choice

You want someone else to operate the orchestrator, with an SLA.
You rely on Orkes-specific features, integrations or SDK behaviour beyond the Conductor API node-flow implements.
Your procurement process needs an established vendor and a standard licence.

Moving from Orkes

The path is the same as from Conductor OSS: change the SDK base URL to node-flow's /conductor prefix, create node-flow service accounts, register your definitions and move workers one queue at a time. Orkes credentials are not imported — see Conductor compatibility.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a free, self-hosted alternative to Orkes Conductor?

node-flow is one: it implements Conductor’s JSON workflow model and a Conductor-compatible API, runs on PostgreSQL alone, and is free to run in production, including commercially. Conductor OSS is another option if you want the original Java server under Apache 2.0.

Do Orkes JavaScript, Python or Java SDKs work with node-flow?

The supported workflow and worker endpoints work through node-flow’s /conductor/api layer. The JavaScript SDK 4.0.0 is exercised in node-flow’s regression suite. Other SDK versions and optional features should be verified before a production switch.

Does node-flow include RBAC and SSO?

Yes. Namespaces, role-based access control with groups and tag-based grants, API keys, service accounts, mTLS, OIDC workload identity, OIDC and SAML single sign-on, sealed secrets and an audit log are all part of node-flow.