Dify vs Sim (2026)

Integrations connect Dify to model providers, tools, data sources and external services through a Tool node, a Dify Tools management surface, an HTTP Request node for arbitrary APIs, MCP tools, Custom Endpoints, an External Data Tool extension and a public marketplace of installable plugins typed across Models, Tools, Data Sources, Triggers, Agent Strategies, Extensions and Bundles. Agent nodes invoke tools autonomously with per-parameter control over whether values are model-generated or fixed at configuration time.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai integrations and node reference, marketplace.dify.airead 2026-08-31

More than 1,000 native integrations span communication (Gmail, Slack, Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp), productivity (Notion, Google Workspace, Airtable), development (GitHub, Jira, Linear), CRM and revenue (Salesforce, HubSpot, Attio, Gong), data and search (PostgreSQL, BigQuery, Pinecone, Perplexity, Exa) and security and IT (CrowdStrike, Okta, AWS IAM), exposed to agents as tools inside workflows. Anything not built in connects through MCP.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/introductionread 2026-09-29

Workflow and Chatflow share one node library and execution model, with If-Else branching, Iteration over arrays, Loop with progressive refinement, Question Classifier routing, Variable Aggregator convergence, Parameter Extractor, sandboxed Code execution, and Orchestration Logic covering how nodes are arranged, nested or reused. Agent nodes run a reasoning-and-tool loop as a step inside a larger flow with a configurable iteration ceiling, a published workflow can be called as a tool by another workflow or exposed as an MCP server, and version control plus Snippets support reuse across flows.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai workflow, node and version-control referencesread 2026-08-31

A visual workflow builder offers built in control blocks including Router, Condition, Loop, Parallel and a Workflow block for composing sub workflows. Agents reason inside Agent blocks and act through tools, and Mothership, the natural language control plane, scaffolds and edits workflows, tables and knowledge bases across the workspace, with API and SDK build paths running alongside the canvas.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/introductionread 2026-09-29

A dedicated Trigger family has three members, Schedule Trigger, Integration (plugin) Trigger and Webhook Trigger, and the Start node sets whether a workflow begins on demand or automatically from a user message, API call, scheduled trigger, webhook, plugin event or uploaded payload. On the output side, channels are a hosted web app, an iframe or chat-widget embed, the REST API, the difyctl CLI and a published MCP server. Trigger Events are metered on every tier, 3,000 on Sandbox with a cap of two triggers per workflow and 20,000 a month on Professional with unlimited triggers per workflow.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai node reference, dify.ai/workflows and dify.ai/pricingread 2026-08-31

Six core triggers, Start, Schedule, Webhook, RSS Feed, Table and Sim Workspace Events, start workflows, and deployments expose any workflow to the outside world as an API, a chat interface or an MCP server.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/introductionread 2026-09-29

Knowledge is a product surface of its own. Knowledge bases come ready to use, with configurable chunking, cleaning and indexing method, and a custom Knowledge Pipeline can be built and published as its own orchestrated flow. Content comes in from local files, Notion sync and website crawl, with document metadata management, a Knowledge Retrieval node, a retrieval hit-testing tool, and an External Knowledge API specification for pointing Dify at a customer's existing RAG service. Storage and request-rate quotas are metered per tier.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai knowledge tree and dify.ai/pricingread 2026-08-31

Knowledge bases are a workspace resource of their own, with connectors, tag based filtering, chunking strategies and retrieval debugging, and agents retrieve relevant passages from customer documents to ground answers.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/tools/knowledgeread 2026-09-29

State persists within a conversation but not across them. A Variable Assigner node manages persistent conversation variables in Chatflow applications, Chat Web Apps keep persistent history, and the Agent node has a Memory toggle with a configurable window size, implemented as a token buffer over recent messages. Log history is retained and browsable per tier, 30 days on Sandbox and unlimited on the paid plans, and workflow runs can be inspected after the fact. Dify offers no memory that carries across sessions or learns over time.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai node reference and dify.ai/pricingread 2026-08-31

Memory on the Agent block needs a conversation ID to persist across runs, and the agent can be set to one of four memory modes. None sends independent requests, Conversation holds the full history keyed by a conversation ID, Sliding Window by messages keeps the N most recent, and Sliding Window by tokens keeps messages up to a token limit.

The Mem0 integration lets agents keep persistent memory across workflow executions, recalling past conversations, remembering user preferences and building on previous interactions, with add, semantic search and retrieve operations, and Zep ships as a second external memory option. Tables hold durable structured rows that workflows read and write, and Variables carry in-run state.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai agent block, Mem0 tool and workflow documentationread 2026-08-31

Human Input is a workflow node that pauses the workflow to request human input. In Workflow Studio, before actions that affect sensitive data, access or policy, the run pauses and a person can approve, edit, comment on or forward it before it continues, with timeout handling. A Sensitive Content Moderation endpoint extension is a separate guardrail, and workspace member roles govern who can act.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai node reference and dify.ai/workflowsread 2026-08-31

Human in the Loop and Guardrails ship as core workflow blocks alongside Condition and Wait, and enterprise access control enforces which blocks and model providers each permission group can use, both in the UI and at execution time.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/introductionread 2026-09-29

Dify holds SOC 2 Type I and Type II and ISO 27001:2022, with the ISO assessment by auditing firm Johanson, complies with GDPR, and releases its reports to paid customers on request through security@dify.ai. A trust center at security.dify.ai has a subprocessors page, and Dify publishes a signed Data Protection Agreement PDF alongside its privacy policy, terms and marketplace agreement.

Customers get SSO via SAML/OIDC, fine-grained RBAC down to workflow level, SCIM provisioning, session policies, tamper-evident audit logs streamed to the customer's SIEM, PII-redacted prompt history and bring-your-own-key encryption, and SSO and the enterprise control set come only on the Enterprise tier.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai/en/policies/agreement/get-compliance-report, dify.ai/dify-enterprise and security.dify.airead 2026-08-31

Sim's Trust Center at trust.sim.ai lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and GDPR, and SOC 2 compliance is among the Enterprise features. Access controls include SAML 2.0 and OIDC SSO across Okta, Entra ID, Google Workspace and ADFS, workspace roles and permission groups enforced at execution time, verified domains, session policies with maximum lifetime, idle timeout and sign out of all members, dedicated outbound IPs, secrets management and configurable data retention.

Sourcesim.ai homepage and pricing page, docs.sim.ai enterprise Security pageread 2026-09-29

A built-in analytics dashboard covers performance, cost and engagement, and conversation and run logs carry stated retention, with downloadable archived workflow logs, a Run History view, a Variable Inspector for intermediate values, and typed error metadata per node. Traces stream over OpenTelemetry to seven named external stacks, Langfuse, LangSmith, Opik, W&B Weave, Arize, Phoenix and Alibaba Cloud ARMS. Enterprise adds tamper-evident audit logs streamed to the customer's SIEM, per-call traces and PII-redacted prompt history.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai monitor tree and dify.ai/dify-enterpriseread 2026-08-31

Logs record every run block by block as a workspace resource of their own, with logging and alerts, cost visibility for each run, enterprise audit logs tracking configuration and security relevant actions, and data drains that stream workflow logs, audit logs and Mothership data to a customer owned S3 bucket or HTTPS webhook on a schedule.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/introductionread 2026-09-29

Dify runs as hosted Dify Cloud, as a Dify-managed single-tenant dedicated cluster in the customer's region, as a customer-managed deployment into the customer's own AWS, GCP or Azure VPC through a Helm chart or Terraform modules, or fully air-gapped on-prem with locally deployed models and no egress. The open-source Community Edition self-deploys with Docker Compose and has its own 277-page self-hosting guide. Data stays inside the customer's VPC, region and perimeter, with bring-your-own-key encryption and multi-tenant isolation offering tenant-level quotas and access policies.

Sourcedify.ai/dify-enterprise and docs.dify.ai self-host treeread 2026-08-31

Sim runs cloud hosted at sim.ai or self hosted through Docker Compose and Kubernetes, including a fully offline setup with local models through Ollama, and self hosted deployments unlock the entire enterprise feature set through environment configuration, so the customer can control hosting entirely.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/introductionread 2026-09-29

Dify Marketplace carries a named templates catalog of ready-to-use workflows that open in Dify with one click, filterable by Marketing, Sales, Support, Operations, IT and Knowledge and by partner, with entries such as Daily AI News Digest by langgenius, Competitive Landscape Intelligence, AI Technical Research Assistant and a Qdrant upsert on a Google Drive trigger, each showing its publisher and usage count, alongside a plugin catalog typed across Models, Tools, Data Sources, Triggers, Agent Strategies, Extensions and Bundles and a Creator Center. Customers can publish their own apps through Publish Apps to Marketplace, workflows export and import as DSL, and Snippets reuse groups of nodes.

Sourcemarketplace.dify.ai/templates and docs.dify.ai publish-to-marketplaceread 2026-09-29

Agent skills provide reusable packaged capabilities and Mothership scaffolds complete systems from a natural language description, and Sim does not describe a template gallery, prebuilt agent library or marketplace.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/introductionread 2026-09-29

Model Providers lets the customer either spend Dify credits on hosted models or connect its own provider accounts and API keys, and the LLM node selects the model per node, so different steps of one workflow can run on different models. OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI and Tongyi are available on credits, and once credits run out the customer switches to its own key. Model providers install as marketplace plugins, and air-gapped deployments connect locally deployed models.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai model-providers, dify.ai/pricing and dify.ai/dify-enterpriseread 2026-08-31

More than fifteen providers are supported, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, Groq, Cerebras, DeepSeek, Mistral, xAI and OpenRouter, with bring your own key at base provider pricing and no markup, and local models run through Ollama or VLLM at no API cost. Enterprise permission groups can restrict which providers are allowed.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/blocks/agentread 2026-09-29

A REST API with a published OpenAPI specification integrates Dify applications into the customer's own product, with app credentials, streamed responses and session management. The difyctl CLI runs Dify apps from terminals, scripts, CI and other AI agents, and a plugin development kit lets third parties build tools, models and integrations. Published workflows are exposed as MCP servers that Claude Desktop, Cursor and other MCP clients can use, inbound webhooks, custom endpoints and an External Knowledge API specification round out the options, and the whole platform is open source on GitHub.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai API reference and CLI overview, dify.ai/workflowsread 2026-08-31

Sim is open source under Apache 2.0 with the full source on GitHub, a public API and SDKs, a Function block for custom JavaScript, custom tools, and MCP in both directions, so agents consume MCP tools and any workflow deploys as an MCP server, with enterprise custom blocks on top.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai/introductionread 2026-09-29

Customers can run a single node or the whole flow against sample input, inspect intermediate variable values before real traffic arrives, review run history, read typed error metadata and configure predefined error-handling logic so nodes stop, return defaults or route to a recovery branch. Knowledge retrieval has its own hit-testing tool, an Annotation System curates approved answers with a quota per tier, and version control restores any published build. Dify offers no evaluation, scoring, regression suite or benchmarking product.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai debug tree, knowledge test-retrieval and version-control referencesread 2026-08-31

The Evaluator block is a core block that uses AI to score and assess content quality against metrics the customer defines, each with a name, description and numeric range, with accuracy, clarity and relevance on one to five scales as worked examples.

The block generates a JSON Schema response format from those metrics and enforces strict mode so the model returns only numeric scores, and it supports quality control and A/B testing, including comparing several AI generated responses and assessing Agent block outputs to create feedback loops. A published pattern chains Agent to Evaluator to Condition against a threshold.

Guardrails, knowledge base retrieval debugging, block-by-block run traces and per-run cost visibility help with debugging. Sim does not describe keeping test sets, stored expected outputs or a regression history across versions.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai evaluator block and core blocks documentationread 2026-08-31

The node library has no browser, desktop or computer-use node. An Import Data from Website crawl feeds the knowledge base, and a tutorial scrapes a public profile through a third-party crawling tool. Both reach content over HTTP. Dify acts on external systems through APIs, HTTP requests, MCP tools and installed plugins.

Sourcedocs.dify.ai node reference and knowledge import treeread 2026-08-31

Browser Use and Stagehand ship as workflow tools in the integrations catalog alongside Apify and Bright Data, letting workflows drive real browsers against interfaces that expose no programmatic API, with Stagehand performing natural language navigation and action on live pages. These are third party browser engines wired in as catalog integrations, not a hosted or local browser or desktop session Sim runs itself.

Sourcedocs.sim.ai tools catalogread 2026-08-31