Dify vs n8n
Both are catalogued under Workflow & Low-code. The figures come from the GitHub API; the assessments are ours.
DifyVisual builder for LLM apps, with RAG and agents includedOfficialSource-available
n8nNode-based automation with a growing set of AI agent nodesOfficialSource-availableAt a glance
| At a glance | Dify | n8n |
|---|---|---|
| License | Source-available | Source-available |
| Languages | Python, TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Deployment | Self-hosted / Managed cloud | Self-hosted / Runs locally / Managed cloud |
| Maturity | Established | Established |
| Stars | 153k | 201k |
| Star growth over the last 7 days | +28 ★ | +51 ★ |
| Forks | 24.1k | 60.1k |
| Open issues | 976 | 1.3k |
| Last commit | 15 Aug 2026 | 15 Aug 2026 |
| Activity | Active | Active |
What each one does
Dify
A complete platform — prompt orchestration, retrieval, agent tools and an admin UI — that non-engineers can operate once a team has set it up. The licence is a modified Apache 2.0 with additional conditions on multi-tenant hosting and branding, so it is source-available rather than open source. Read it before building a product on top.
Full entry →n8n
Wires hundreds of services together on a visual canvas, and increasingly places LLM agents inside those flows. The licence is the thing to check first: it is source-available under the Sustainable Use License, not OSI-approved open source. Internal use and self-hosting are fine; reselling it as a hosted service is not.
Full entry →What you can do
Dify
- Stand it up with Docker Compose — Running
cp .env.example .envthendocker compose up -din thedocker/directory brings the stack up on a 2-core, 4 GiB machine, with initialization at http://localhost/install. - Build workflows on a canvas — The visual editor chains LLM steps, retrieval and tools into a workflow you can test in place, and the Prompt IDE compares model performance on the same prompt while you tune it.
- Give an agent 50+ tools — Agents can be defined on LLM Function Calling or ReAct and handed built-in tools such as Google Search, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion and WolframAlpha, or custom ones you register.
- Call your apps from your backend — Every Dify offering comes with a corresponding API, and application logs and traces can be routed to Opik, Langfuse or Arize Phoenix for monitoring.
- Take the self-host past the quickstart — Configuration beyond the defaults lives in
docker/.env, with optional advanced variables split by theme underdocker/envs/; for a highly available setup the README hands you off to community-contributed Helm charts, Kubernetes YAML, Terraform and AWS CDK templates in outside repositories.
n8n
- Run the editor locally —
npx n8nstarts it immediately, or thedocker.n8n.io/n8nio/n8nimage with ann8n_datavolume serves the canvas on port 5678. - Put agents inside workflows — The same canvas that wires 1500+ integrations can hand a step to a multi-step LLM agent with tool use, branching logic and a human approval gate before the flow continues.
- Start from a published workflow — Alongside the 1500+ integrations the README points at 9,000+ workflow templates on n8n.io/workflows, so a flow can begin as an existing one rather than an empty canvas.
- Drop into code inside nodes — JavaScript, Python and npm packages are available inside a node for the parts that visual building cannot express.