Dify vs Mastra (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Dify if

• Fits if your team wants agents and chatbots that answer from your own documents
• Works for teams that have to self-host or keep everything in a private cloud

Look elsewhere if

• Pricey if you work alone: the first paid step is $59 a month for a 3-member workspace, and Team is $159
• Tight if you're staying on Sandbox, with 1 member, 5 apps and 200 message credits that don't refill
• Not for you if you need SSO or more than one workspace, which are Enterprise only, at a price not published
• Watch out: the free Community Edition means hosting it on Docker yourself, with one workspace and Dify's own license
• Skip it if you want a phone or desktop app, as Dify is a web app

Pick Mastra if

• Fits if you write TypeScript and want to build your own agents
• Works for teams that want to deploy agents on Vercel or Cloudflare

Look elsewhere if

• Not for you if you want no-code, since building an agent means writing TypeScript
• Pricey if you grow, as past the allowance egress is $0.10 a GB and events $10 per 100K
• Watch out: RBAC, SSO and audit logs are Enterprise only, and the SOC 2 report starts at Team at $250
• Watch out: some repository folders (ee/) sit under a separate enterprise licence

Dify

• The Sandbox plan's 200 message credits are a one-time grant; after that you supply your own model API keys.
• Cloud plans are priced per workspace with member caps: 1 on Sandbox, 3 on Professional and 50 on Team.
• SSO, multiple workspaces and a commercial license are part of the Enterprise edition only.
• The free Community Edition is limited to a single workspace and uses Dify's own Apache-2.0-derived license.

Mastra

• It is a code framework, so building an agent means writing TypeScript; there is no no-code builder.
• Cloud usage past each plan's allowance is billed separately, for example $0.10 per GB of egress and $10 per 100K observability events.
• RBAC, SSO and audit logs are Enterprise only, and the SOC 2 report starts at the Team plan.
• Some directories in the repository are under a separate enterprise license (ee/), so not every file carries the main open-source terms.

Dify

Workflow Studio

A visual canvas for workflows and chatflows, where blocks define how an app retrieves data, makes decisions, calls tools, asks for human input and completes a task.

Agents

Agents are built by chatting or by manual configuration with skills, tools and knowledge, then used as an app, embedded in a website or reused as a node inside a workflow.

Knowledge pipeline

Repeatable pipelines extract, clean, chunk and index files, websites, online documents and drives into a knowledge base, with retrieval testing before it is connected to an app.

Marketplace and plugins

Model providers, tools, data sources and MCP integrations are installed from the Marketplace or defined yourself, and reused across the apps in a workspace.

Publishing and monitoring

Apps ship as hosted web apps, API endpoints, embeds or MCP-compatible tools, with logs, feedback, annotations, latency and usage data to review.

Cloud, enterprise or self-hosted

Use Dify Cloud, deploy the Enterprise edition in your own VPC or on Kubernetes with a Helm chart, or self-host the Community Edition with Docker.

Mastra

Agents

Typed agents are defined in code with instructions, a model, tools and runtime behavior in one place.

Workflows

Typed steps can be chained with retries and branches into workflows that a team can inspect.

Memory

Agents can keep durable context through thread-aware storage, semantic recall and an observational memory option.

Observability and evals

Traces, metrics and logs sit alongside evaluation tools such as scorers, datasets and experiments.

MCP servers

Agents, tools and other resources can be exposed as Model Context Protocol servers that any MCP-capable system can call.

Deploy anywhere

A Mastra app runs on any Node.js host or as a standalone server, with optional deployers for Vercel, Netlify and Cloudflare, or on Mastra Cloud.

Dify

• SandboxFree

  1 member, 5 apps, 50 knowledge documents, 50 MB of knowledge storage, 200 one-time message credits and 30 days of log history.

• CommunityFree

  Open-source edition you self-host with Docker: all core features in the public repository, a single workspace and community support.

• Professional$59

  per workspace / month ($590 per year billed annually)

  3 team members, 50 apps, 5,000 message credits a month, 500 knowledge documents, 5 GB of storage and 20,000 trigger events a month.

• Team$159

  per workspace / month ($1,590 per year billed annually)

  50 team members, 200 apps, 10,000 message credits a month, 1,000 knowledge documents, 20 GB of storage and unlimited trigger events.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Self-hosted or VPC deployment with a commercial license, multiple workspaces, SSO, advanced security controls and professional support.

Mastra

• Free$0

  Unlimited agents, users and deployments, 100K observability events, 1 GB egress, 5 connections and 15-day trace retention.

• Starter$25

  per workspace / month

  One small dedicated project, usage alerts, 250K observability events, 10 GB egress, 10 connections and 60-day trace retention.

• Team$250

  per workspace / month

  One small and two medium dedicated projects, a SOC 2 report, 10M observability events, 100 GB egress, 50 connections and 180-day trace retention.

• EnterpriseCustom

  RBAC, SSO, audit logs, custom allowances and connections, and dedicated support.

Dify

• Annual discount

  Save 17% with annual billing

  Dify's pricing page lists a 17% saving for annual billing: Professional is $590 a year instead of $59 a month, and Team is $1,590 a year instead of $159 a month.

• Education

  Free Professional plan for students and educators

  Verified students, teachers and school staff aged 18 or over can use the Yearly Professional plan at no cost, re-verified each year. Message credits stay at the Sandbox level of 200.

Mastra

No public discounts listed.