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AWS Step Functions vs Camunda comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
AWS Step Functions reduce development time and costs, enhance scalability and reliability, streamline workflows, and improve ROI.
Sentiment score
7.1
Camunda delivers cost-effective, stable solutions enhancing productivity, reducing operational expenses, and offering comprehensive process coverage for large enterprises.
We can get a high-level overview of what we want to design quickly and then implement it via code using Python and deploy it via infrastructure as code using CDK or Terraform.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
AWS Step Functions support is reliable and effective, with prompt resolutions, but responsiveness varies by company size and support level.
Sentiment score
6.3
Camunda's customer service is praised for helpfulness and expertise, though some mention challenges with complexity and regional support.
I use enterprise support, which is excellent, providing responses within fifteen minutes.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
The speed of reply and the content of their responses usually solve the problems that arise.
EPM Practice Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
AWS provides the best support, followed by Microsoft, and then Google.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
They really understand deeply and in detailed fashion the solution.
Owner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
They provide better support for the enterprise edition.
Technical and Solution Architect at Freelance
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
AWS Step Functions is praised for automatic scalability, efficiently handling diverse workloads and adapting to varying demands.
Sentiment score
7.0
Camunda excels in scalability using modern tools but faces database challenges; improvements are noted in documentation and setup.
They can handle multiple simultaneous requests effectively.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
We have workloads that may differ based on incoming data, and we did not face any lag or job failures because of AWS Step Functions.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
There isn't much need for scalability when creating orchestration in AWS Step Functions, which explains the rating of six.
Assistant Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Camunda offers a high level of scalability, especially when using its SaaS model, which manages and scales implementations automatically.
Technical and Solution Architect at Freelance
ECS and Fargate make horizontal scalability very easy.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
They have that REST layer, REST APIs layer that makes it easy to integrate and make it part of a microservices ecosystem and APIs.
Owner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
AWS Step Functions is rated highly for its stable operation, offering reliable performance without downtime across multiple zones.
Sentiment score
7.8
Camunda is highly rated for stability, with minimal bugs, and performs efficiently in various production environments even under load.
If one zone fails, others handle the demand, ensuring high availability.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
I never faced any faults or issues due to its stability with AWS, making it very reliable with no downtime and 100% reliability.
Assistant Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
There haven't been any significant outages in my experience with Camunda.
Technical and Solution Architect at Freelance
We were not really concerned about the performance on the process itself because it was super simple, super straightforward, and it did not present itself as a bottleneck, nor did we feel it was adding additional time in the execution.
Owner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users seek AWS Step Functions improvements in payload size, IDE integration, licensing, visibility, pricing, data transformation, and fault tolerance.
Camunda needs better customization, programming language integration, scalability, and AWS support, with enhanced documentation and performance improvements.
Do not stack up in the same page view; rather keep it upside down, in a horizontal manner, or allow us to scroll through it.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
There is room for improvement in terms of integration with other products.
EPM Practice Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
More open documentation would be beneficial to understand the deployment process better and facilitate easier setup.
Technical and Solution Architect at Freelance
There is an issue where, in some situations, I need to scale up by observing both CPU and memory usage of containers, yet under the current options available at Amazon, this is not possible.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
Since they made the move to cloud deployment in a more SaaS-oriented way, they do not invest too much in the community version.
Owner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Setup Cost

AWS Step Functions pricing is flexible and cost-effective but complex, with costs mainly tied to workflows and executions.
Camunda's pricing is competitive, but costly for small businesses; enterprise edition offers advanced features and support options.
The orchestration service for us is basically free.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Pricing for Step Functions is very cheap.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
The cost is average, provided it is configured correctly.
Big Data Architect at SoftServe Ltd.
AWS pricing is very competitive compared to Azure and cheap compared to Google.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
There is a licensing cost for using the SaaS model and Enterprise edition of Camunda.
Technical and Solution Architect at Freelance
 

Valuable Features

AWS Step Functions provide service integration, visual workflows, and task parallelization, improving process automation and error management.
Camunda is valued for its flexibility, open-source customization, user-friendly interface, and effective management of complex processes.
It is a main orchestration tool for us and helps us save costs.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AWS Step Functions offers advanced workflows that save time and enhance efficiency by reducing delays and ensuring consistent orchestration among various services.
Big Data Architect at SoftServe Ltd.
Step Functions provide seamless integration with AWS services, which enhances the speed of application development.
Senior AWS Tech Lead at Nextios
EC2 makes scaling horizontally incredibly easy, especially when working under the ECS service.
Chief Technology Officer at Looplex SA
Camunda's support for BPMN 2.0 is a great advantage because it allows us to have a common language to discuss technology and business in the same perspective.
Owner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
The biggest difference between Camunda and Bonita might be that Camunda is simpler and more flexible for setting.
Technical Director / Project Manager at I-way
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Step Functions
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
11th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (9th)
Camunda
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (3rd), Process Automation (1st), AI Orchestration Frameworks (3rd), Agentic Automation (8th), AI Agent Builders (9th), Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of AWS Step Functions is 1.4%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Camunda is 7.1%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Camunda7.1%
AWS Step Functions1.4%
Other91.5%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

YM
Senior Software Engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Central orchestration has streamlined complex data workflows and now drives timely aviation alerts
The best features AWS Step Functions offers include the ability to deploy it via code. It helps us orchestrate anything that we want. Even if we have Glue jobs for another use case or Lambda that we are currently looking forward to, we are using Lambda to take DynamoDB data for real-time sales monitoring, then it goes to our S3 bucket. We have multiple workflows that are orchestrated by AWS Step Functions, and at the core, the main functionality is based on different frameworks. We have an Athena complete workflow, Glue job-based workflow, and a separate Lambda-based workflow. All of these are separately handled in AWS Step Functions. This is a good point and again with the inbuilt facilities of it, including how we can construct those workflows and add up a catch state or roll back or do multiple iterations using the Map state, that is very helpful for us.The Map state feature has specifically helped my team create a rollback state of the data since we were dropping some of our data assets. In case we want them back, we just wanted to do this. We took a particular layer and provided the data list, including the tables list, and using the Map state, we iterated over this list and one by one we did the backups of this data at the concurrency of five tables in a single execution. The Catch state, on the other hand, allows us to identify any error immediately. If we encounter an error, the Catch state immediately picks it up and we integrated webhooks or email notifications. That is how we are able to identify immediately if we face any error. At the core of our data engineering platform, AWS Step Functions sit at the topmost core of whatever pipelines we have. It is a main orchestration tool for us and helps us save costs. It is a key component of our engineering platform.
CristianoGomes - PeerSpot reviewer
Owner at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Supports long-running asynchronous processes effectively but has not evolved much in recent years
I think Camunda is focusing too much on the SaaS offering right now and not much on improving and developing the product itself. I did not see any innovations on that aspect, especially for the open-source version. I was making some tests recently and the tool seemed pretty much the same as it was three or four years ago. Since they made the move to cloud deployment in a more SaaS-oriented way, they do not invest too much in the community version. To be honest, it did not change much from the Activiti initial version. Activiti was pretty much what Camunda is today. They invested a lot on Zeebe and made it the engine for their SaaS cloud version. Camunda itself, the embedded engine, did not evolve too much. They could invest more on that.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
Midsize Enterprise15
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Amazon Step Functions?
My customer's usual use cases for AWS Step Functions that I've been working with include orchestration, flows, diagram creation, and creating a flow for multiple Glue jobs to run a single pipeline.
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Step Functions?
I use the Visual Workflow Editor feature of AWS Step Functions. I mainly work through code and then improve it through the visual aspect. There are two ways to do orchestration: through code and th...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Step Functions?
I am not familiar with the pricing as most of my projects have environments from the customer side, and the contract-related issues are not my responsibility.
How does Bonita compare with Camunda Platform?
One of the things we like best about Bonita is that you can create without coding - it is a low-code platform. With Bonita, you can build the entire mechanism using the GUI, it’s that simple. You c...
Which do you prefer - Appian or Camunda Platform?
Appian is fast when building simple to medium solutions. This solution offers simple drag-and-drop functionality with easy plug-and-play options. The initial setup was seamless and very easy to imp...
Which would you choose - Camunda Platform or Apache Airflow?
Camunda Platform allows for visual demonstration and presentation of business process flows. The flexible Java-based option was a big win for us and allows for the integration of microservices very...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions
Camunda BPM
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alpha Apps, The Guardian, SGK, Bigfinite
24 Hour Fitness, AT&T Inc., Atlassian, Autodesk, Barclays, BNP Paribas, CapitalOne, Commerzbank AG, Deutsche Telekom, Fujitsu, Gainsight, Generali, Goldman Sachs, Provinzial, NatWest Group, Panasonic, R-Kom, Swisscom AG, VHV Group, Warner Music, WellPoint, Zalando
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Step Functions vs. Camunda and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
907,768 professionals have used our research since 2012.