NocoBase
NocoBase runs two release lines at once while the v3 client rewrite absorbs the AI work
Comparison · PM
Asana vs Flowable
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Asana and Flowable — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Asana vs Flowable: at a glance
What is Asana?
Asana's agent left the app — it now answers work questions inside Slack threads.
Two arcs run in parallel. A text and editor surface has been built out steadily — Pages, rich text in custom fields, highlighting, threaded comments, and now syntax highlighting — and an agent layer has grown alongside it through AI Teammates, Teammate Skills, and AI Studio. Nearly every release cites a named Community forum request as its origin. The editor work carries a recurring caveat: features land on web first and mobile trails, sometimes losing formatting outright.
What is Flowable?
Flowable ships once a year and spends it on the Java platform, not on the process engine.
Flowable's release history is a slow major-version cadence — 7.0.0 in 2023, 7.1.0 in 2024, 7.2.0 in 2025, 8.0.0 in February 2026 — and each major is anchored to a Java-ecosystem jump rather than to process modelling itself. Flowable 8 moves to Spring Framework 7 and Spring Boot 4, makes Jackson 3 the default, and removes JUnit 3 and JUnit 4 support outright. The engine-level additions that do arrive, like lambda expressions in expressions, are incremental extensions to BPMN and CMMN semantics.
Asana vs Flowable: editorial side-by-side
Asana
7.5PMCOLLAB
Asana's agent left the app — it now answers work questions inside Slack threads.
◆ Current state
Two arcs run in parallel. A text and editor surface has been built out steadily — Pages, rich text in custom fields, highlighting, threaded comments, and now syntax highlighting — and an agent layer has grown alongside it through AI Teammates, Teammate Skills, and AI Studio. Nearly every release cites a named Community forum request as its origin. The editor work carries a recurring caveat: features land on web first and mobile trails, sometimes losing formatting outright.
◆ Where it's heading
The editor arc is now mostly closing out a backlog of formatting asks, and each release is narrower than the last. The agent arc is the one changing shape: it has moved from configuring automations inside Asana to answering questions about the work graph from inside another vendor's application, on every tier including Personal. Building it permission-inheriting and private-by-default suggests Asana is treating the agent as a distribution surface rather than a feature to upsell.
◆ Prediction
Expect the same agent to appear on more surfaces — Teams and email are the obvious next ones — and expect mobile parity work on the editor features that shipped web-only. The language-tier expansion Asana flagged for syntax highlighting is the low-risk near-term item.
Flowable
0.0PM
Flowable ships once a year and spends it on the Java platform, not on the process engine.
◆ Current state
Flowable's release history is a slow major-version cadence — 7.0.0 in 2023, 7.1.0 in 2024, 7.2.0 in 2025, 8.0.0 in February 2026 — and each major is anchored to a Java-ecosystem jump rather than to process modelling itself. Flowable 8 moves to Spring Framework 7 and Spring Boot 4, makes Jackson 3 the default, and removes JUnit 3 and JUnit 4 support outright. The engine-level additions that do arrive, like lambda expressions in expressions, are incremental extensions to BPMN and CMMN semantics.
◆ Where it's heading
This is a project whose roadmap is largely set by the platform underneath it. Each major forces a coordinated upgrade on adopters — Java 17 and Jakarta 9 at 7.0.0, Spring Boot 4 and Jackson 3 at 8.0.0 — and in exchange delivers query, variable and migration refinements aimed at large existing deployments. The 7.0.0 decision to drop the UI applications and the content, form and Mule modules set the pattern: narrow to the engines and the REST APIs, and let everything else go.
◆ Prediction
Expect the next major to track the following Spring and Java LTS jump on roughly the same annual rhythm. Nothing in these entries points to an AI or agent-facing direction, so any such move would be a genuine departure rather than a continuation.
Alternatives to Asana and Flowable
Other PM products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Asana or Flowable.
Hive
Hive ships in batches, and this one is all planning accuracy and admin control.
Plane
Plane ships a fortnightly digest, and the AI layer is where the real work is going.
Ever Teams
Ever Teams shipped ten tags in twelve hours and one of them touched the product
Apploye
Apploye's feed is an SEO blog, and its running theme is defending monitoring on privacy grounds.
Notesnook
Notesnook ships steady 3.4.x patches across desktop and Android with the notes kept off-feed.
See all Asana alternatives → · See all Flowable alternatives →
Recent activity from Asana and Flowable
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoAsana⌨️ Syntax highlighting in text editors is now live!
- 1d agoAsana🎉 @mention Asana in Slack to create tasks and get answers ⚡
- 12d agoAsanaMake key details pop with text ✨ highlighting ✨
- 13d agoAsana📝 Rich text in custom fields is now live!
- 15d agoAsanaThreaded Comments are LIVE! 🧵
- 26d agoAsana✨📄 Introducing Pages! (formerly known as Notes) ⚡
- 5mo agoFlowableSpring Boot 4 and Jackson 3 required; JUnit 4 support removed ⚡
- 0y agoFlowableAsync variables, skip expressions and broader query filters
- 1y agoFlowableLiquibase dropped from App, CMMN, DMN and event registry engines
- 2y agoFlowableBug-fix release adding async leave and LocalDate timers
- 2y agoFlowableSpring Boot 3.1.6 support and dynamic event subscriptions
- 2y agoFlowableJava 17 rebase; UI apps, content and form engines removed ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Asana and Flowable?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Asana is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 0.0), with 2 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Asana better than Flowable?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Asana is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 0.0), with 2 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other PM products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Asana?
Top Asana alternatives in PM are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Asana alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/asana for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Flowable?
Top Flowable alternatives in PM are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Flowable alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/flowable for the full list with editorial commentary on each.