Pinchy vs Flowise
Flowise is an open-source, self-hostable visual builder: drag-and-drop nodes to compose LLM chains and agents, with LangChain and LlamaIndex under the hood. Pinchy is a governed multi-user platform: a per-agent tool allow-list, roles, and a signed audit trail, with agents that reach users over web and Telegram and act in business systems. Both are open source and self-hostable. They solve different problems.
The Core Difference
Flowise is a drag-and-drop canvas for composing LLM chains and agents. You wire up nodes (models, retrievers, tools, memory) from a large library, prototype fast, and export the flow as an API or chat widget. The center of gravity is building.
Pinchy is not a canvas. It runs agents for a team with governance built in: each agent gets an explicit tool allow-list, users have roles and groups, and every action is recorded in a signed audit trail. The center of gravity is control.
Flowise is Apache 2.0 and Pinchy is AGPL-3.0, and both self-host for free. The difference is the layer they live at: Flowise is the tool you build a flow with, Pinchy is the platform you run governed agents on.
Side by Side
Figures as of June 2026. Check each project's pricing and docs for current details.
| Flowise | Pinchy | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary model | Visual flow / agent builder | Governed agent platform |
| License | Apache 2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Self-hosting | First-class (free) | First-class (Docker Compose, GHCR) |
| Visual flow canvas | Yes, drag-and-drop node graph | No, not a flow builder |
| Node / integration library | Large (100+ integrations, vector DBs) | Focused (Odoo, Gmail, web, docs) |
| Local models / offline | Yes (Ollama and others) | Yes (Ollama, fully offline) |
| End-user channels | Embed widget, API, chat | Web UI and Telegram |
| Per-agent tool permissions | Defined inside each flow | Default-deny allow-list per agent |
| Roles and groups | Workspaces / RBAC in enterprise | Admin / Member roles + groups (free) |
| Audit of agent actions | Audit logs in enterprise | HMAC-signed per row, free, CSV export |
| SSO / SAML | Yes (OIDC, in enterprise) | On the roadmap, not shipped yet |
| Free tier | Self-host free; cloud free tier capped | Free, no user limit (AGPL) |
| Paid pricing | Cloud from ~$35/mo; enterprise on request | Flat Pro ~EUR 99/mo (up to 10 users) |
Being Honest
If you want to see and shape the logic of a chain or agent as a node graph, Flowise is built for exactly that. The drag-and-drop canvas makes branching, retrieval and tool wiring visible and editable. Pinchy has no flow canvas.
Flowise lets you stand up a RAG chain or a multi-step agent in minutes, then expose it as an API or embeddable widget. For experimenting with chain designs, that speed is hard to beat. Pinchy is for running governed agents, not iterating on flow internals.
Flowise ships 100+ integrations: many models, embeddings, vector stores, document loaders and tools from the LangChain and LlamaIndex ecosystem. Pinchy's integration list (Odoo, Gmail, web, docs) is deliberately narrow and governance-focused.
Because flows are composed from primitives, developers can express custom logic, swap components, and extend with their own nodes. If you need that level of control over the pipeline itself, Flowise gives it to you. Pinchy intentionally constrains agents rather than exposing the pipeline.
Where Pinchy Wins
Every Pinchy agent starts with zero tools. An admin enables each one explicitly, per agent. Governance is the default posture, not something you remember to wire into a flow. There is also no shell or code execution.
Every agent action is recorded in an individually HMAC-SHA256-signed audit row you can export to CSV and verify. It is tamper-evident per row, in the free AGPL tier. With Flowise, audit logs sit in the enterprise offering.
Pinchy ships Admin and Member roles plus groups for a real team, free under AGPL. Granular custom RBAC and SSO are on the roadmap, not shipped yet, but the multi-user governance baseline is there today.
Pinchy agents talk to people over a web UI and Telegram, not just an embed widget or API. They are meant to be used by a team day to day, with per-user and per-org context, rather than wired into someone else's app.
Pinchy ships a deep Odoo integration over read-write JSON-RPC: query stock, create orders, reconcile invoices, all from chat or Telegram. Acting inside a business system is a governed, first-class use case, not a generic connector node.
Pinchy is free under AGPL with no user limit, plus a flat Pro tier (not per seat). The license key is validated offline, API keys are encrypted at rest with AES-256-GCM, and there is zero telemetry. Nothing leaves your network.
Decision Guide
Your goal is to visually compose custom LLM flows and agents, prototype chains quickly, and draw on a large library of nodes, vector stores and LangChain building blocks. You want a builder, and you are comfortable owning the pipeline.
You want to run governed agents for a team: a default-deny tool allow-list per agent, roles and groups, and a signed audit trail, with agents acting in Odoo and email and reaching users over web and Telegram. You want a platform, not a canvas.
Are you building the flow, or governing the agent? If you need to design and tweak chain logic visually, that points to Flowise. If you need to control what agents may do and prove what they did, that points to Pinchy.
FAQ
Yes. Flowise is open source under the Apache 2.0 license and free to use for commercial and personal projects. It is a low-code, drag-and-drop visual builder for LLM flows and agents, built on top of LangChain, LangGraph and LlamaIndex. Pinchy is also open source, under AGPL-3.0, but it is a governed multi-user agent platform rather than a flow-building canvas.
Yes. Self-hosting is first-class for Flowise: you can run it for free on your own infrastructure or on AWS, Azure, GCP and similar platforms, with full control of your data and models. Flowise also offers a paid cloud. Pinchy is self-hosted first too, shipped as a single Docker Compose stack with pre-built images, and runs fully offline with local models.
For teams that want to run governed agents rather than visually compose custom LLM flows, yes. Flowise gives you a drag-and-drop canvas and a large node library to build chains and agents. Pinchy gives you a permission allow-list per agent, Admin and Member roles with groups, and a tamper-evident signed audit trail, with agents reaching users over a web UI and Telegram. If your goal is bespoke flow composition, Flowise is the better fit.
Flowise is free to self-host under Apache 2.0 and also sells a cloud, with paid plans starting around USD 35 per month (figures as of June 2026, check Flowise for current pricing); SSO and audit logs sit in its enterprise offering. Pinchy is free under AGPL-3.0 with no user limit, and adds a flat Pro tier around EUR 99 per month billed annually for up to 10 users (not per seat). Roles and the signed audit trail are in Pinchy's free tier.
Choose Flowise when your goal is to visually compose custom LLM flows and agents, prototype chains quickly, and draw on a large library of nodes, integrations, vector stores and LangChain building blocks. Choose Pinchy when you want to run governed agents for a team: a default-deny tool allow-list per agent, roles and groups, and a signed audit trail, with agents acting in business systems like Odoo and email and reaching users over web and Telegram.
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