# ibl.ai vs Flowise

> Source: https://ibl.ai/resources/comparisons/self-hosted-ai-vs-flowise
> Last updated: 2026-10-20


*The best-loved open-source visual agent builder was archived in August 2026 — what a self-hosted Flowise deployment can do now, and what moving to an owned, maintained platform involves*

**On ibl.ai you own all the code and the data, run it model-agnostic across any LLM, and pay with no per-seat pricing — so you can deploy anywhere, from your own cloud to a fully air-gapped network.**

## What's the difference between ibl.ai and Flowise?

Flowise and ibl.ai both leave you holding the code. Flowise is Apache-2.0 and self-hosted; with ibl.ai you own all the code and the data, deployed inside your perimeter. Ownership was never the gap between them — maintenance now is.

Workday acquired Flowise in August 2025. On July 29, 2026 the team stopped feature development and pull-request review; the GitHub repository was archived on August 13, and core-team support ended August 31, per the project's own notice.

The code remains Apache-2.0, and the team encourages forks. A running Flowise instance keeps working — but security fixes, new model integrations and dependency upgrades are now your team's job, or a community fork's.

ibl.ai is maintained, model-agnostic, has no per-seat pricing, and deploys anywhere: your cloud, a VPC, on-premise or air-gapped. Flowise's visual builder remains the friendlier canvas. ibl.ai is family-owned and operated from New York, NY.

## How do ibl.ai and Flowise compare feature by feature?

### Ownership & Maintenance

| Criteria | ibl.ai | Flowise |
|----------|--------------------|--------------------|
| Source code you receive | Platform source under license; the OS frontend and infra-cli are MIT on GitHub. | Apache-2.0 and fully self-hostable; the archived repository stays readable and forkable. |
| Upstream maintenance | Actively developed, with releases published on the ibl.ai updates feed. | Archived August 13, 2026; npm packages and Docker images marked deprecated; core support ended August 31. |
| Pricing shape | Commercial license, usage-based with no per-seat pricing. | Free to run; the cost is the engineers who now maintain the fork. |
| Model choice | Provider cards include Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA, OpenAI and xAI; switch per agent. | Broad at archive time; new providers and model APIs now need someone to write the nodes. |

### Building Agents

| Criteria | ibl.ai | Flowise |
|----------|--------------------|--------------------|
| Visual builder | Workflow canvas with Agent, File search, Guardrails, MCP, If/else, While, User approval and state nodes. | Flowise's signature strength: a mature drag-and-drop canvas with a very large node library. |
| Time to a first working flow | Agents configure in minutes; integrating systems of record takes longer. | Minutes from docker run to a chatbot — still true for an existing install. |
| Memory & RAG | Global and agent memories; datasets from files, URLs, crawls, Drive, OneDrive and GitHub on a retrain schedule. | Memory, loader and vector-store nodes you compose per flow. |

### Production Layers

| Criteria | ibl.ai | Flowise |
|----------|--------------------|--------------------|
| Guardrails & PII | Moderation and safety prompts, PII redact/mask/block across 13 entity types. | Moderation nodes exist; organization-wide policy is yours to assemble and now to maintain. |
| Evals | Benchmarks up to 10,000 rows, LLM-as-Judge and human review, CSV export. | Evaluations were a Cloud and Enterprise plan feature, not part of the self-hosted open-source edition. |
| Users, RBAC & audit | SSO, RBAC, SCIM, spend caps and per-agent audit logs. | Whatever identity and audit features your edition shipped stop evolving; extending them is now yours. |

## What should Flowise users do after the sunset?

### Is Flowise still safe to run after the sunset?

**ibl.ai:** A maintained platform keeps absorbing dependency CVEs, model API changes and new providers as part of the license.

**Flowise:** An archived Flowise keeps running exactly as deployed. The risk accrues slowly: unpatched dependencies and model APIs that change while the nodes do not.

**Verdict:** Nothing breaks on day one. Plan for the month a dependency CVE or a model deprecation lands, and decide now who owns that fix.

### Should I fork Flowise or migrate?

**ibl.ai:** Migrating trades the visual canvas you know for a maintained platform with governance, memory, evals and engineers accountable to your timeline.

**Flowise:** Forking keeps every flow untouched and costs nothing upfront, but your team becomes the upstream for security, upgrades and new models.

**Verdict:** Fork if Flowise is a small internal tool and you have a maintainer. Migrate if users depend on it in production.

### Which has the better visual builder?

**ibl.ai:** ibl.ai's Workflow canvas covers branching, loops, approvals, guardrails and MCP, built for governed business processes rather than node-by-node LLM plumbing.

**Flowise:** Flowise's canvas is more granular and has a far larger node library, and many teams find it the fastest way to sketch an LLM pipeline.

**Verdict:** Flowise wins the canvas. ibl.ai wins what surrounds it: identity, memory, data, evals and a maintained roadmap.

## Should my team keep Flowise or move to ibl.ai?

### Small internal tools with a willing maintainer — Flowise

A fork of an Apache-2.0 codebase you already run is cheap to keep, provided someone owns patching it.

### Production chatbots and agents serving many users — ibl.ai

Users depending on an unmaintained runtime is a growing operational risk; a maintained platform with RBAC and audit removes it.

### Regulated or air-gapped deployments — ibl.ai

Compliance reviewers ask who patches the software. After August 2026, for Flowise the answer is your own team.

### Teams that prototype visually — Either

Keep sketching in Flowise if you like the canvas, and run the agents your organization relies on on a maintained platform.

## How do I migrate from Flowise to ibl.ai?

### Flowise → ibl.ai (medium difficulty)

Timeline: Three to eight weeks, depending on the number of flows and custom nodes

- Agents: each chatflow's prompt, model and tools becomes an ibl.ai agent; agentflows with branches become Workflows with Agent, If/else, While and User approval nodes.
- Tools: custom tool nodes become MCP servers; ibl.ai agents connect to any MCP server URL over WebSocket or Streamable HTTP.
- Memory: buffer and summary memory nodes map to ibl.ai chat sessions; long-term facts map to global or agent-specific memories.
- RAG: loader and vector-store nodes become agent datasets — files, URLs, crawls, Drive, OneDrive, GitHub — retrained on a schedule.
- Eval: rebuild test questions as a CSV benchmark and score with LLM-as-Judge or human review before switching traffic.
- Deployment & embeds: provision with infra-cli on AWS, GCP or an existing server, and replace the Flowise embed script with ibl.ai's embed widget.

Docs and skills for this move:

- [Workflows: the graph builder](/docs/os/chat-canvas/workflows)
- [Skill: iblai-api-agent-create](/developer/skills/iblai-api-agent-create)
- [MCP connectors](/docs/os/agent-settings/mcp)
- [Agent memory](/developer/platform/agents/memory)
- [Datasets](/docs/os/agent-settings/datasets)
- [Evals](/docs/os/agent-settings/evals)
- [Embed an agent](/docs/os/agent-settings/embed)
- [Deploy with infra-cli](/developer/infra-cli)

### Flowise → your own fork (low difficulty)

Timeline: Days, then ongoing maintenance

- Fork the archived repository and pin the Docker image you run today.
- Assign an owner for dependency updates and security advisories.
- Budget for writing nodes yourself when a model provider changes its API.
- Reasonable for internal prototypes; revisit before users depend on it.

## FAQ

**Q: Is Flowise discontinued?**

The open-source project is. Feature development stopped July 29, 2026, the GitHub repository was archived August 13, and core-team support ended August 31. The Apache-2.0 code remains available to fork.

**Q: Does my self-hosted Flowise stop working?**

No. An existing install keeps running. What stops is upstream maintenance: security fixes, dependency upgrades and new model integrations are now up to you or a community fork.

**Q: Who owns Flowise now?**

Workday acquired Flowise in August 2025 to bring its agent-builder capabilities to the Workday platform. The independent open-source project was then wound down in 2026.

**Q: Can ibl.ai import Flowise flows?**

Not automatically. Flows are rebuilt as ibl.ai agents and Workflows; prompts, models, tools and documents transfer directly, and the canvas concepts — branches, loops, approvals — map closely.

**Q: Does ibl.ai charge per seat?**

No. ibl.ai has no per-seat pricing; you pay by usage against caps you set per organization, agent or user.

**Q: How does ibl.ai fit for former Flowise users?**

On ibl.ai you own all the code and the data as you did with Flowise, run any model and deploy anywhere — with a maintained platform and engineers accountable for it.


## Where do these facts come from?

1. Flowise stopped feature development and pull-request review on July 29, 2026, scheduled archival with npm and Docker deprecation, ended core-team presence on August 31, and encourages forks of the Apache-2.0 code. [FlowiseAI: The Future of Flowise](https://flowiseai.com/sunset)
2. The FlowiseAI/Flowise repository was archived and made read-only on August 13, 2026; its source is under the Apache License 2.0. [FlowiseAI/Flowise on GitHub](https://github.com/FlowiseAI/Flowise)
3. Workday announced its acquisition of Flowise on August 14, 2025, citing over 42,000 GitHub stars. [Workday newsroom](https://newsroom.workday.com/2025-08-14-Workday-Acquires-Flowise,-Bringing-Powerful-AI-Agent-Builder-Capabilities-to-the-Workday-Platform)
4. Flowise evaluations were available only on the Cloud and Enterprise plans. [Flowise docs: Evaluations](https://docs.flowiseai.com/using-flowise/evaluations)


## Where does ibl.ai fit alongside Flowise?

**ibl.ai is the agentic AI platform where you own all the code and the data. You self-host the entire stack inside your own perimeter, run it model-agnostic across any LLM and switch anytime, and pay by usage with no per-seat pricing — so you can deploy anywhere: your cloud, on-premise, GovCloud, or fully air-gapped.**

ibl.ai keeps what Flowise users valued — self-hosting and code you control — and adds what an archived project can no longer provide: a maintained roadmap, governance, memory, evaluation and accountable support.

Agentic OS is the platform, with a Workflow canvas for branching agents; Agentic Vibe gives coding agents 157 skills to build on it. You own all the code and the data, and forward-deployed engineers can rebuild your highest-traffic flows with you.

- **You own all the code and the data.** Full source code under a perpetual license, running on your infrastructure. Not API access to someone else's platform — the stack itself is yours.
- **Model-agnostic.** Run any LLM — Claude, GPT, Gemini, Llama, Command, or your own fine-tune — and switch providers without rewriting the platform.
- **No per-seat pricing.** Usage-based billing against a budget cap you set. Cost tracks what your organization actually uses, not how many people you employ.
- **Deploy anywhere.** Your cloud, your VPC, on-premise, GovCloud, or a fully air-gapped network with no outbound connectivity.

1.6M+ users across 400+ organizations run the platform this way, including NVIDIA, MIT, and Syracuse University.

ibl.ai is family-owned and operated from New York, NY — a U.S.-headquartered, domestically-owned long-term partner, not a vendor that sells licenses and moves on.