name: Flowable FinOps
description: >-
  Financial operations guidance for organizations adopting Flowable. Covers
  cost modeling across the open-source and commercial tiers, key cost drivers,
  and strategies for optimizing spend on Flowable deployments.
url: https://www.flowable.com/pricing
created: '2026-06-13'
modified: '2026-06-13'
tiers:
  - tier: Community Edition
    costModel: Free / Open Source
    directAPICost: none
    infrastructureCost: Operator-borne (self-hosted)
    licenseCost: None (Apache-2.0)
    supportCost: None (community forum only)
    typicalUseCases:
      - Development and testing environments
      - Small-scale internal automation
      - Proof-of-concept and evaluation
      - Developers learning BPMN/CMMN/DMN
  - tier: Flowable Platform
    costModel: Commercial License — Users and RCPI Packages
    directAPICost: Included in platform license
    licenseCost: Custom (contact sales)
    supportCost: >-
      Included via Silver, Gold, or Platinum SLA tier; cost scales with tier
      selection and number of named support contacts
    primaryCostDrivers:
      - name: Named Users
        description: >-
          Licenses are allocated per named user accessing Flowable Work,
          Design, and Control applications.
      - name: RCPI (Runtime Case/Process Instances)
        description: >-
          Active runtime instances of processes and cases are the primary
          consumption metric. High-volume automation workloads will require
          larger RCPI packages.
      - name: Infrastructure
        description: >-
          Self-hosted or cloud-hosted compute, database (H2, MySQL, PostgreSQL,
          Oracle, MS SQL Server, or MongoDB), and storage costs are
          operator-borne.
      - name: Support Tier
        description: >-
          Silver (business hours) to Platinum (1-hour Sev1 SLA, 24/7/365)
          support tiers add cost and include varying numbers of named contacts.
    costOptimizationTips:
      - >-
          Right-size RCPI packages by monitoring completed vs. active instance
          volumes; archive completed instances regularly to avoid inflated counts.
      - >-
          Use Flowable's async executor and job tables housekeeping features to
          purge historic data and keep database footprint lean.
      - >-
          Consolidate multiple automation use cases into a single Flowable
          deployment to maximize license utilization.
  - tier: Agentic Case Platform
    costModel: Commercial License — Users, RCPI, and Agent Packages
    directAPICost: Included in platform license
    licenseCost: Custom (contact sales)
    additionalCostDrivers:
      - name: Agent Packages
        description: >-
          AI agent execution (Orchestrator, Knowledge, Document, Utility agents)
          is licensed via Agent Packages in addition to Users and RCPIs.
      - name: LLM API Costs
        description: >-
          Flowable integrates with OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, and Anthropic APIs for
          AI-assisted tasks. LLM API calls are billed directly by the LLM
          provider at their prevailing rates, separate from the Flowable license.
      - name: Vector Store / Knowledge Infrastructure
        description: >-
          Knowledge agents require a vector database (e.g., pgvector, Pinecone,
          Weaviate) for retrieval-augmented generation. Infrastructure and
          indexing costs are operator-borne.
    costOptimizationTips:
      - >-
          Cache LLM responses for repetitive document classification or knowledge
          queries to reduce per-call LLM API spend.
      - >-
          Use Flowable's configurable LLM provider settings to route tasks to
          lower-cost models where quality thresholds permit.
      - >-
          Monitor Agent Package consumption with Flowable Control dashboards and
          set alerting thresholds before overage discussions with account teams.
generalFinOpsGuidance:
  - topic: Deployment Cost Baseline
    detail: >-
      A minimal production Flowable deployment requires: application server
      (2–4 vCPU, 4–8 GB RAM), relational database (PostgreSQL recommended,
      4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM), and optionally Elasticsearch for historic data queries.
      Monthly infrastructure cost on AWS/Azure/GCP typically ranges from
      $200–$800/month for modest workloads before licensing.
  - topic: Evaluation Strategy
    detail: >-
      Start with the Community Edition to validate process models and API
      integration patterns at zero license cost before committing to commercial
      tiers. The open-source REST API is functionally equivalent for core
      BPMN/CMMN/DMN operations.
  - topic: Contract Negotiation
    detail: >-
      Enterprise pricing is negotiated directly with Flowable. Annual
      commitments typically yield better per-unit pricing than monthly or
      perpetual arrangements. Request bundled support tier inclusion in initial
      negotiations.
contactSales: https://www.flowable.com/contact
pricingPage: https://www.flowable.com/pricing