Rundeck vs Tines (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Rundeck if

• Fits if your ops team runs scripts across many servers and wants a job log
• Works for small teams that can host the free Community edition

Look elsewhere if

• Not for you if you need single sign-on or high availability, since those aren't in Community
• Skip it if you don't want to host it, as Community is self-hosted
• Watch out: commercial pricing isn't published; a PagerDuty Runbook Automation licence is bought through sales
• Watch out: a free trial of the commercial product is offered, but its length isn't stated

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

Rundeck

• Single sign-on, high-availability clusters and enterprise support are not in the free Community edition.
• Commercial pricing is not published; the downloads page says a license for PagerDuty Runbook Automation is bought through sales.
• Community is self-hosted and needs a registration step before download.

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.

Rundeck

Workflow execution

Jobs chain scripts, tools, APIs and system commands into standard procedures such as provisioning, software updates and configuration changes.

Job scheduling

Scheduled and self-service jobs for daily reports, file transfers and other periodic work, as an alternative to maintaining cron or Windows Task Scheduler.

Job activity log

Execution history for commands and jobs shows when each ran, its log output and duration, which supports auditing.

Plugins

Community plugins connect Rundeck to infrastructure and tools, and teams can write their own. Certified enterprise plugins come with the commercial editions.

Key storage and encryption

The Community edition includes key and password encryption and a key storage facility.

High availability and runners

The commercial editions add clusters with automatic takeover, failed-job resume, node health checks and the next-generation runner for remote environments.

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.

Rundeck

• Rundeck Community$0

  Free open-source edition you host yourself, for small teams; registration is needed to download.

• Runbook Automation Self HostedCustom

  Commercial edition you host, with high availability, enterprise support and certified plugins. License sold through sales.

• Runbook AutomationCustom

  PagerDuty-hosted edition with a stated 99.9% availability SLA, single sign-on and managed security patching.

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.

Rundeck

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.