Meet Abada: An Open-Source BPMN Engine for the Future of Process Automation
Discover Abada, a lightweight, developer-friendly BPMN engine built for embedding, customizing, and automating business processes in your own apps
Introducing Project Abada
In a world increasingly driven by automation, businesses of all sizes are striving to simplify and streamline internal workflows. Whether it's onboarding new employees, managing support tickets, or handling approvals, process automation is a must.
Enter Project Abada — a lightweight, embeddable, open-source BPMN engine designed for developers who want full control without the bloat of legacy solutions
What is Abada?
Abada is a clean and minimal BPMN 2.0 execution engine, purpose-built for:
Embeddability: Plug directly into your Java application.
Transparency: 100% open source, no lock-in.
Simplicity: Just the features you need, nothing more.
Unlike tools like Flowable or Camunda that come with enterprise baggage, Abada focuses on the essentials:
User Tasks
Service Tasks
Process flows
Multi-tenant readiness
All without complex configurations or proprietary extensions.
Why We Built It
Existing engines are either too heavy, too closed, or too complex to extend without vendor support. We created Abada because we wanted:
A process engine that’s truly developer-first
No reliance on enterprise-only UIs or SDKs
A solid foundation for both embedded systems and SaaS
How It Works
Abada parses standard BPMN XML definitions and executes flows through its modular components:
Runtime Engine – Orchestrates the process execution
Task Manager – Delegates work to handlers
User Task Handler – Interfaces with human steps
Service Task Handler – Executes background jobs
Persistence Layer – Stores instances and history
REST API Layer – External integration made easy
Abada vs Camunda vs Flowable
| Feature / Engine | Abada | Camunda | Flowable |
|---|---|---|---|
| License | Open-source | Open-source + commercial editions | Open-source + commercial editions |
| Language | Java | Java | Java |
| Embeddability | Fully embeddable, minimal runtime | Embeddable but heavier | Embeddable but requires tuning |
| UI Designer | Planned (BPMN.js-based) | Web Modeler (paid) | Modeler (free but basic) |
| API Type | REST-first, customizable | REST and GraphQL | REST |
| Focus | Lightweight, developer-first | Enterprise-level orchestration | Process automation with some UI |
| Extensibility | Delegate classes and plugins | Extensive but complex | Customizable via Spring Boot |
| Multi-tenancy | Built-in support planned | Enterprise edition only | Possible with customization |
What’s Next
Project Abada is young but growing fast. Here's what's planned:
A drag-and-drop BPMN designer (based on bpmn.io)
Admin UI and process dashboards
More out-of-the-box integrations
Join the Journey
Project Abada is open source and community-driven. Whether you’re building an internal tool, a SaaS product, or experimenting with BPMN, we’d love your feedback and collaboration.
⭐ Visit and star the GitHub repo here
Let’s bring process automation back to developers.