Parabola vs Tines (2026): which should you pick?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Tines grades higher than Parabola: 2.6 against 2.2 out of 4.0.
Checked Oct 5, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 · graded Oct 10, 2026 and Nov 12, 2026 by ToolGPA
Tines grades higher on features. They get the same grade on value for money, the free plan, ease of use and platforms.
Price, platforms and features side by side. The table says where each price was read and when.
Which one is for you
Pick Parabola if
- Fits if you do repeated spreadsheet and data work for finance or operations
- Works for one person trying it on the free plan
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want paid prices up front, as credit prices are not shown
- Tight if you work in a team, as free Basic is for 1 user
- Watch out: SSO, roles and SLAs are Business only, sold through sales
- Watch out: AI on the free plan is limited
Pick Tines if
- Fits if your security team wants alert intake, triage and remediation automated
- Works for organizations that need a self-hosted, on-prem or hybrid deployment
Look elsewhere if
- Skip it if you want to see a price before talking to sales, because paid plans are by quote
- Tight if you're staying free, with 3 live workflows, 5,000 Tines units a month and no public website URLs
- Watch out: paid plans have you bring your own AI model, so token costs go to your provider on top of the license
- Watch out: units used past your allowance are billed as overage, after a one-month grace period for new customers
- Not for you if you only need a couple of personal automations, since paid plans are platform licenses
How we grade them
| 2.2GPAParabolaFair | 2.6GPATinesGood | |
|---|---|---|
| Value for money | CPaid credit prices are not shown on the pricing page. Business is custom, so it sits in the middle. | CThere's no price to judge. The pricing page offers a quote request and nothing else, and what you'd be buying is a platform licence sized in Tines units, 100K a month on Core. Model costs go to your own AI provider on top of whatever the licence comes to. |
| Free plan and trial | CBasic is free indefinitely for 1 user, with 1,000 credits and limited AI. Credits run out as you use it. | CUnlimited users, spaces and connectors sounds open-handed until you read the next line: 3 live workflows. That's a wall you meet in an afternoon. Then 5,000 Tines units a month, a one-time $50 AI allowance, and no public website URLs allowed. |
| Features | CA plain-language agent builder, integrations and version history, but limited AI on the free plan and the paid plans are not shown. | ATwo full products, and 3B does things the rest of this category doesn't: every step of a workflow runs in its own sandbox, credentials go in through a proxy so neither the builder nor the AI ever sees them, and generated workflows come with tests and Git branching. Cases handles incidents. |
| Ease of use | CNo store rating on record. You describe and build each agent, with accounts to connect. | CNo rating on record, and you start by choosing between two products that work differently. Then connectors to wire up, Tines units to make sense of, and a platform written for security and IT people rather than for anyone who wanders in. |
| Platforms and integrations | BWeb app with connections to Shopify, NetSuite, Google Sheets, Snowflake, Amazon Seller Central and Dynamics Finance. No desktop or phone app. | BWeb only, with no phone or desktop app on the listing. It makes up for it in what it talks to: Slack, Teams, Jira, Okta, CrowdStrike, ServiceNow, GitHub and Splunk, an API, and coding assistants like Claude Code plugging into 3B. |
| Best for | no-code data tasks for finance and operations | security and IT teams automating alerts and tickets |
The GPA is the average of the five grades: an A is 4 points, an F is none. The full reasons are on each tool's page: Parabola and Tines. How we grade
Where they differ
- Tines is self-hostable, according to its own site.
- Parabola also covers spreadsheets.
- Tines also covers templates.
In commonFree planWebAI featuresWorkflow automationAI agents
At a glance
| Parabola | Tines | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free plan | Free plan |
| Starts at | Not published | Not published |
| Free plan | Basic plan: 1 user, 1,000 credits and limited AI, usable indefinitely. | Explore edition of Tines 3B: unlimited users, spaces and connectors, 3 live workflows, 5,000 Tines units a month and a one-time $50 AI allowance. Tines Stories has its own free Community Edition. |
| Free trial | None listed | None listed |
| Web | ||
| Made by | Parabola | Tines |
| Price read from | parabola.io | tines.com |
| Checked | Nov 12, 2026 | Oct 5, 2026 |
Worth knowing
Parabola
- Paid credit prices are not shown on the pricing page.
- The free Basic plan is for one user with limited AI.
- SSO, roles and SLAs are in Business plans, which are sold through sales.
Tines
- Paid prices are not published: the pricing page only offers a quote request, and plans are sold as platform licenses.
- The free Explore edition stops at 3 live workflows and 5,000 Tines units a month, and does not allow public website URLs.
- Paid plans use a bring-your-own-model approach, so LLM token costs are paid to your own AI provider.
- Tines units used beyond the plan allowance are billed as overage, after a one-month grace period for new customers.
Key features
Parabola
- Plain-language agent builder
- Describe a task and ship an agent.
- Credit-based usage
- Credits are used when agents run, not while building; there is no cap on the number of agents.
- Integrations
- Connectors for ERP, warehouse, shipping, spreadsheets and email, plus an API step for the rest.
- Version history
- Business plans track every change with one-click rollback.
- Applied AI team
- Business plans include live training, a proof of concept on production data and deployment support.
Tines
- Storyboard
- In Tines Stories, workflows are assembled by placing and connecting actions on a canvas: Webhook, HTTP request, Receive email, Send email, Event Transform, Condition and AI Agent.
- Prompt-to-code building in Tines 3B
- You describe a process in plain language and 3B writes the workflow as code, proposing tests as it goes. Git integration and branching are standard, and coding assistants such as Claude Code can connect.
- Isolated runs and hidden credentials
- Each step of a 3B workflow runs in its own sandbox, and credentials are injected through a proxy so that secrets are never shown to the builder or the AI, or stored in the code.
- Cases and Workbench
- Tines Stories includes Cases for case and incident management and Workbench, an AI copilot. The free Community Edition allows up to 20 Workbench messages a day across the tenant.
- Autofix and Autotune
- Autofix suggests repairs for anomalies and likely breaks in a workflow. Autotune proposes reliability, performance and clarity improvements on a branch you review before it goes live.
- Monitoring and AI spend
- Dashboards show workflow performance, spend across LLM providers and models, who has access to which connectors and spaces, duplicate workflows and estimated savings.
Plans
Parabola
Basic$0
Self-serve for 1 user with 1,000 credits and limited AI; more credits can be added pay-as-you-go.
BusinessCustom
Custom credit volumes, role-based access, SSO, SOC 2 Type II, SLAs and a dedicated account manager.
Tines
Explore$0
Free edition of Tines 3B: unlimited users, spaces and connectors, 3 live workflows, 5,000 Tines units a month and a one-time $50 AI allowance.
CoreCustom
Paid Tines 3B license on a multi-tenant stack with 100K Tines units a month, unlimited workflows and your own AI model.
ScaleCustom
A dedicated stack for larger deployments, with 300K Tines units a month.
PowerCustom
A premium dedicated stack for the highest volumes, with 900K Tines units a month.
Ways to pay less
Parabola
No public discounts listed.
Tines
- Startups
Startup Program for Tines Stories
Tines offers a heavily discounted, fully featured Tines Stories tenant to startups with under 100 employees, under 5 years old and under $50M raised. Services companies are excluded.
Common questions
Which is cheaper, Parabola or Tines?
As of Nov 12, 2026, Parabola publishes no starting price, and Tines publishes no starting price.
Which has a free plan, Parabola or Tines?
As of Nov 12, 2026, both Parabola and Tines have a free plan.
More comparisons
How this page was made
- The verdict at the top follows a fixed rule. When both tools are in the same category and either is in our top three for it, the verdict follows that ranking: the higher-placed tool is our pick. The top three weigh who each tool suits as well as its grades, so a pick can go against the GPA. Otherwise the page does not pick one and says which grades higher: the higher GPA first; on a tie, the one with a free plan, then the one that starts cheaper in dollars a month, counted the same way for both; if they are still level, what the choice depends on.
- The grades are our own, from each tool’s review or report card. The GPA is their average.
- Prices, plans and platforms come from each tool’s listing. The table above says where each price was read and when.
- The differences and the answers to the questions are worked out from those listings.