Neureus vs Flowise

Ship AI Features,
Not Infrastructure

Flowise is an open-source LLM orchestration platform you deploy and manage yourself. Neureus is the same capabilities — RAG, agents, multi-provider routing — as a managed API. No Docker, no VPS, no 3am pager alerts.

Try Neureus free See pricing

The real cost of self-hosting

Flowise is free to use — but running it in production isn't. Here's what self-hosting typically costs per month for a small team.

Cost item	Flowise (self-hosted)	Neureus
Docker + VPS (DigitalOcean 4GB)	$48/mo	—
PostgreSQL (managed)	$15/mo	—
Redis (session/queue)	$7/mo	—
Maintenance (DevOps hrs × rate)	$100–300/mo	—
Neureus Builder plan	—	$29/mo
LLM tokens (same volume)	≈market rate	10% below OpenRouter
Workers AI (Llama, Mistral, etc.)	≈$0.10–0.90/1M	Free
Monthly total	$170–$370/mo + hours	$29/mo

Self-hosting estimates for a production setup. Development-only setups cost less but aren't reliable for production traffic.

What you're trading away

Flowise approach

Deploy Docker container to VPS

Set up PostgreSQL + Redis

Configure nginx + SSL

Set up backups

Handle version upgrades

Monitor uptime

Scale when traffic spikes

Build your actual product

Neureus approach

GET /ai/chat → response

POST /rag/ingest → documents indexed

POST /agents/{id}/run → ReAct result

Build your actual product

Feature comparison

Feature	Flowise	Neureus
Multi-provider LLM routing	✓	✓
RAG pipeline	✓	✓
Visual workflow builder	✓	—
AI agents	✓	✓
MCP server	—	✓
Batch inference (async, 40% off)	—	✓
Prompt preprocessor (token savings)	—	✓
BYOK per-tenant key isolation	—	✓
Composite AI patterns	—	✓
TypeScript SDK	—	✓
SSO/OIDC enterprise auth	Paid	✓
No Docker required	—	✓
No VPS to maintain	—	✓
Edge deployment (300+ regions)	—	✓
Free tier	—	✓
Open-source	✓	—
Self-hostable	✓	—

From Flowise drag-and-drop to Neureus API

Flowise's visual builder is great for prototyping. For production code that your team can test, version, and deploy, the Neureus API is more maintainable.

// Flowise: visual flow → exported JSON → opaque runtime
// Neureus: the same RAG + chat flow in explicit, testable code

import { NeureuAI } from '@neureus/sdk';
const client = new NeureuAI({ apiKey: process.env.NEUREUS_API_KEY });

// Ingest your documents (once, or on update)
await client.rag.ingest({
  url: 'https://your-docs-site.com/api',
  chunkSize: 512,
  overlap: 64,
});

// RAG + chat in one call
const { text, sources } = await client.ai.chat({
  model: '@wai/llama-3.3-70b',  // free via Workers AI
  messages: [
    { role: 'system', content: 'You are a helpful assistant. Use the retrieved context.' },
    { role: 'user', content: userQuestion },
  ],
  rag: { query: userQuestion, topK: 5 },
});

console.log(text);  // grounded answer
console.log(sources);  // source documents

When Flowise wins

Flowise's visual workflow builder is genuinely excellent for rapid prototyping — drag LLMs, RAG retrievers, and tools onto a canvas and connect them without writing code. If you're exploring AI capabilities with non-developers or need to iterate on flows without coding, the visual interface has real value.

Flowise is also fully open-source and self-hostable. If your organization has data residency requirements, an air-gapped environment, or compliance constraints that preclude using external APIs, self-hosting is the right choice. Neureus runs on Cloudflare's edge — if that doesn't meet your data residency requirements, Flowise on your own infrastructure may be the better fit.

Finally, if you want to extend the orchestration engine itself — modify how retrievers work, add custom node types to the canvas, or fork the UI — Flowise's open-source nature enables that. Neureus is a managed API; you call it, you don't fork it.

Ship AI Features,Not Infrastructure