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Tool profile · AI agent frameworks

Dify

The visual builder AgentKit was — but read the licence before you commit.

72
sovereignty

Dify is the closest replacement for Agent Builder specifically: a visual canvas for wiring prompts, tools, retrieval and branching, with a hosted-app layer on top, so a team that liked drawing the workflow does not have to start writing graphs in Python. It is by far the most-starred project in this comparison at around 150.8k. One important correction to how it is usually described. Dify is very widely listed as open source, and its own licence file is headed "Open Source License", but the text is a modified Apache-2.0 with two additional conditions: you may not use the source to operate a multi-tenant service without written authorisation, and you may not remove or alter Dify's logo and copyright notices in the frontend. Those restrictions mean it does not meet the Open Source Definition. It is source-available. For most internal use that changes nothing; if you intend to build a product for your own customers on top of it, it changes everything, and it is exactly the clause people discover late.

SOURCE-AVAILABLEModified Apache-2.0 (source-available, not OSI open source)SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
LicenseModified Apache-2.0 (source-available, not OSI open source)
PricingFree to self-host within the licence terms. Dify Cloud and a commercial licence are paid.
Open sourceNo
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes

What it does well

  • +The nearest thing to Agent Builder's visual canvas — smallest conceptual jump
  • +Self-hostable, with retrieval, tools and app hosting in one product
  • +Enormous community and the most stars of anything in this comparison
  • +Non-engineers can read and change the workflow, which is rare here

Where it falls short

  • Not open source despite near-universal description as such — multi-tenant use needs a commercial licence
  • Branding and logo may not be removed from the frontend
  • Visual workflows are harder to review, diff and version than code
  • Single-vendor control, and the licence explicitly reserves the right to tighten

Dify as an alternative to

Where Dify shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.

Dify head-to-head

Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.

The Macrostack brief

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