Answer first. Floowed is the best Relay.app alternative if your Relay flows were really repeatable operations with people in them, the approvals, requests for input and follow-ups that made Relay known for human-in-the-loop; if you only need a like-for-like switch for simple app-to-app automations with one approval step, Zapier's Human in the Loop tool is the closest match.
Relay.app was liked because it treated the people in a process as part of the automation, not an afterthought. Its users now have to rebuild working flows elsewhere, from memory, without losing those human steps. This guide covers what happened, what to look for in a replacement, the realistic options and how to rebuild. Every competitor price and feature below was checked on the vendor's own site at the time of writing.
What happened to Relay.app
Relay.app shut down in September 2026. The closure was announced in July 2026 and ran in two stages: free accounts closed on 15 August 2026 at 23:59 PT, and paid accounts on 14 September 2026 at 23:59 PT.
The notice that now replaces the relay.app homepage says that Relay.app shut down in September 2026 and that all accounts, workflows and run history have been permanently deleted. Relay did not publish a reason for the closure.
On 17 August 2026, TechCrunch reported that Relay's founder and CEO, Jacob Bank, was rejoining Google as VP of Product for Chrome, and that some of Relay's staff were joining the Chrome team with him. Relay had launched in 2021.
The practical consequence: there is nothing left to log in to. You cannot open an old workflow to check how it was built, and there is no run history to look back on.
What Relay users relied on, and what to look for in a replacement
Relay's own homepage, as it stood in July 2026, centred on a few things. They make a useful checklist.
- Human-in-the-loop steps. Relay let you pull in a teammate anywhere a flow needed an approval, data entry or a review of AI output. This was the feature Relay was best known for.
- AI steps. Built-in AI step templates returned text or clean structured data, powered by included AI credits or your own API key.
- Everyday app automations. Typical Relay flows connected Gmail, Slack and Google Sheets: an email arrives, AI extracts the data, a row lands in a sheet, the team is told in Slack.
- Approachable building. Non-technical people could read and edit a flow, including by chat.
When you judge a replacement, ask five questions:
- Can a human step reach people outside your account? Some tools require every reviewer to have a login on the platform. Clients and suppliers will not create one.
- What happens when nobody answers? A timeout that skips or ends the run is not the same as chasing the person until the answer arrives.
- Are AI steps included? Check whether you need a separate model account and how AI work is billed.
- How is it priced? Tasks, credits, executions and seats count very differently. Price your busiest month, not an average one.
- Is there a record? If someone later asks why something was approved, you need to see who was asked, what they said and which rule applied.
Relay.app alternatives at a glance
| Platform | How human steps work | Pricing shape and entry price | Free route | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Floowed | Chases the named person, system or agent who owes a piece, waits as a long-running case and resumes on the answer; approvals by a person or by your rules, with a full record | Credits, not seats; from $100 a month for 10,000 credits, one shared pool for the whole team | $80 of credits, no card, no sales call, never expire | Repeatable operations with approvals, people to chase and a decision at the end |
| Zapier | Human in the Loop: Request Approval and Collect Data, with timeouts; reviewers need a Zapier account | Tasks; Professional from $19.99 a month, Team from $69 a month | Free plan, 100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps; Human in the Loop needs a paid plan | Simple automations with one approval step |
| Make | Human in the Loop app on the Enterprise plan only, in closed beta | Credits; Core from about $9–16 a month for 10,000 credits (billing period varies) | Free plan, 1,000 credits a month, 2 active scenarios | Visual, branching automations |
| n8n | Human review before an AI agent's tool runs, via 9 channels; Wait node pauses for a form or webhook | Executions; Starter $20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions | Self-hosted Community Edition | Technical teams, self-hosting |
| Activepieces | Todos assign approvals and reviews to project members; Approval piece waits for approval | Credits; Plus $20 a month flat for 10,000 credits | Cloud: 1,000 credits a month; MIT-licensed Community Edition to self-host | Open source, simple pricing |
| Pabbly Connect | Human in Loop step: approve, reject or edit data before the next action | Tasks; Standard includes 10,000 tasks a month; lifetime plans offered | Free plan, 100 tasks a month, up to 2 two-step workflows | Budget-conscious teams |
| Lindy | Guardrails per integration: "Require approval" asks in Slack before writing | Per active user; from $29.99 a month for 3,000 credits each | $50 of credits, valid for 7 days | Personal AI assistant work |
The best Relay.app alternatives, ranked
1. Floowed
Floowed is the operations platform. AI agents do tasks; Floowed runs whole operations. An automation tool runs a sequence of steps. Floowed runs a repeatable business operation from first request to outcome, across every system and person involved. Every case moves through five stages: Gather, Interpret, Chase, Decide, Act. Interpret, Chase and Decide circle until the case is ready.
For Relay users, the point is how people fit in. In Relay, a human step was one step: someone approves, or fills in a field. In Floowed, chasing is part of the case itself. Floowed asks the named person, system or agent who owes a missing piece, waits as a long-running case and resumes when the answer arrives. Automation runs a step. Floowed runs the case.
Approvals work the way you choose. A person can approve, or your rules decide, held in a deterministic, versioned business rules engine. You set how much Floowed decides on its own: every case, only routine ones, or none. Agents do the work. Your rules make the decision.
Relay's AI steps map directly. Floowed is an AI-native, multi-agent runtime that reads documents of any quality and routes between open-weight and frontier models on cost, latency and data residency. The Gmail, Slack and Google Sheets flows Relay users built connect through Gmail, Slack, Google Sheets and the rest of 400+ integrations, plus API and MCP. Your systems of record stay where they are.
Every case keeps a full record: what was read, who was asked, which rule and version decided it, and what was written where. You describe an operation in Slack, Microsoft Teams or the Floowed Dashboard and Floowed builds it, live in minutes. Short app-to-app hops run too, but Floowed earns its place where people are involved.
Best for: client onboarding, supplier onboarding, invoice approval, change approvals, timesheet chasing, refunds and similar operations where the hard part is getting answers from people.
Pricing shape: credits, not seats. 1 credit is 1 cent. Free gives $80 of credits with no card and no sales call, and they never expire. Paid sizes start at $100 a month for 10,000 credits in one shared pool, every feature included, and paid credits roll over one month. A standard case uses about 250 to 800 credits. See pricing. Floowed also works alongside Make, n8n and Zapier if you keep them.
Pick it if your Relay flows were really operations, with approvals, people to chase and a decision at the end.
2. Zapier
Zapier is the most widely used automation platform, and its Human in the Loop tool is the closest like-for-like replacement for Relay's approval steps. Request Approval pauses a Zap so one or more reviewers can approve, decline or change data. Collect Data pauses a Zap to ask for more information. You set a timeout, and choose whether the Zap skips and continues or stops if nobody responds. Only successful Human in the Loop actions count towards task usage.
The limits matter for Relay users. Human in the Loop is a premium app, so it needs a paid plan. Reviewers must have a Zapier account and log in to review. On the Professional plan you can only send requests to yourself; sending them to colleagues needs Team or Enterprise.
Pricing shape: tasks. Free includes 100 tasks a month with two-step Zaps. Professional starts from $19.99 a month; Team from $69 a month with 25 users. See our Zapier alternatives guide and n8n vs Zapier.
Where Floowed takes over: when the person you need is a client or supplier without a Zapier login, or when a timeout should mean "chase again" rather than "skip".
3. Make
Make is a visual builder with strong branching, routers and data handling. Its Human in the Loop app (create a review request, watch completed reviews) is limited to the Enterprise plan and in closed beta for invited customers, so most former Relay users will not have native approvals. The usual workaround is a form or chat message that triggers a second scenario when someone replies.
Pricing shape: credits. Free includes 1,000 credits a month and 2 active scenarios. Core is $12 a month on monthly billing for 10,000 credits, with a saving of 15% or more on annual billing. See Make vs Zapier and n8n vs Make.
Where Floowed takes over: the human steps Relay gave you out of the box are built in, on every size, without a second scenario to stitch them together.
4. n8n
n8n suits technical teams. For AI agents, you can require human review before a tool runs: the reviewer sees what the AI intends to do, then approves or denies. Requests can go through nine channels: n8n Chat, Slack, Discord, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, WhatsApp Business Cloud, Google Chat and Microsoft Outlook. Outside AI agents, the Wait node can pause a run until a form is submitted or a webhook is called.
Pricing shape: executions, regardless of steps. The Community Edition is free to self-host. Cloud Starter is $20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions; Pro is $50 a month billed annually for 10,000. See n8n alternatives.
Where Floowed takes over: n8n gives you the parts to build waiting and approvals yourself. Floowed runs the chasing, waiting and record as part of every case, with no infrastructure to own.
5. Activepieces
Activepieces is open source with a friendlier interface than most self-hostable tools. Its Todos create tasks for project members to act on, such as approvals and reviews, and its Approval piece (now marked legacy) can pause a flow until someone approves or create approval links.
Pricing shape: credits. Free cloud includes 1,000 credits a month. Plus is $20 a month flat for 10,000 credits, and Team is $200 a month. The MIT-licensed Community Edition is free to self-host with unlimited flows and users.
Where Floowed takes over: Todos go to project members. Floowed chases anyone who owes a piece, inside or outside your company, and keeps the case waiting until they answer.
6. Pabbly Connect
Pabbly Connect competes on price. Its Human in Loop step pauses a workflow so a person can approve, reject or edit data before the next action runs. Internal steps such as filters, routers and formatters do not count as tasks.
Pricing shape: tasks. Free includes 100 tasks a month and up to 2 two-step workflows. Standard includes 10,000 tasks a month, and one-off lifetime plans are available.
Where Floowed takes over: a single approve or reject gate covers the simple case; operations that need several people chased over days need the case to wait and resume, which is what Floowed does.
7. Lindy
Lindy is an AI assistant rather than an automation builder. Each integration has a guardrail, and "Require approval" makes Lindy ask in a shared Slack thread, with Approve and Deny buttons, before it writes. Guardrails apply in shared Slack threads only, not in its web chat, Slack DMs or text messages.
Pricing shape: per active user, from $29.99 a month for 3,000 credits each. New users get $50 of credits that last 7 days.
Where Floowed takes over: an assistant improvises each job, however capably. Floowed runs the whole operation on fixed rules with a record of every step, and an assistant like Lindy can be one of the executors inside it.
If your Relay flows ran mostly inside Microsoft 365, or IT needs enterprise governance, also see our Power Automate alternatives and Workato alternatives guides.
How to rebuild your Relay flows
Relay's run history is gone, so start from what you remember and anything you exported during the wind-down.
If you are also weighing a self-hosted agent for the simpler flows, our OpenClaw alternatives guide compares the options for teams.
- List every flow from memory. Name, trigger, apps involved and who depended on it. Ask the people who received its output; they often remember steps you have forgotten. Include flows that ran rarely.
- Mark every step that waited on a person. Approvals, data entry requests and reviews of AI output. Note who the person was, whether they were inside or outside your company, and what should happen if they do not answer.
- Mark every AI step. Write down what it read, what it produced and where the output went.
- Sort by shape. A short app-to-app hop with an occasional approval is a simple automation. Anything where people are chased and a decision is made at the end is an operation, such as invoice approval or supplier onboarding.
- Map the human steps in Floowed. A Relay approval becomes an approval by a named person, or a rule in the policy engine if the answer is routine. A Relay data entry request becomes a chase: Floowed asks the person who owes the piece, waits and resumes the case when it arrives. An AI review step becomes a point where a person checks the case before Floowed acts.
- Describe it and go live. Describe the operation in Slack, Microsoft Teams or the Floowed Dashboard, connect the apps you used with Relay, and it is live in minutes. Run a few real, low-risk cases first.
- Run it beside your manual process for a week. Compare results, then switch over.
- Keep the logic written down. In Floowed every case records what was read, who was asked and which rule decided, so you will not be rebuilding from memory again.
Frequently asked questions
Did Relay.app shut down?
Yes. Relay.app shut down in September 2026. Free accounts closed on 15 August 2026 and paid accounts on 14 September 2026. The notice on its site says all accounts, workflows and run history have been permanently deleted.
What happened to Relay.app?
Relay announced its closure in July 2026 and wound down in two stages, ending in September 2026. Relay did not publish a reason. TechCrunch reported in August 2026 that its founder and CEO, Jacob Bank, was rejoining Google as VP of Product for Chrome, with some Relay staff joining the Chrome team.
Can I recover my Relay workflows?
No. Relay's notice says all accounts, workflows and run history have been permanently deleted. If you saved an export or screenshots before the shutdown, start from those; otherwise rebuild from your memory of the steps, using the checklist above.
What is the best Relay.app replacement for human-in-the-loop work?
Floowed, if the people in your flows need to be chased, sit outside your company, or feed a decision. It runs the whole case, including the waiting, and keeps a record of who was asked and which rule decided. For a single approval inside a simple automation, Zapier's Human in the Loop tool is the closest like-for-like switch, provided your reviewers have Zapier accounts. See human-in-the-loop document automation.
Is there a free Relay.app alternative?
Yes. Floowed gives $80 of credits that never expire, with no card and no sales call. n8n and Activepieces offer free self-hosted Community Editions, and Zapier, Make and Pabbly Connect have free plans with limits.
Do reviewers need an account on the new platform?
It depends on the platform. Zapier requires reviewers to have a Zapier account. n8n can send AI tool approvals through channels such as Slack, Teams and Gmail. In Floowed, the person being chased is asked directly for what they owe, inside or outside your company.
How quickly can I replace Relay?
In Floowed, an operation is live in minutes once you describe it in Slack, Microsoft Teams or the Floowed Dashboard. Most of the time goes into remembering what your Relay flows did, so start with the one your team misses most.
Related guides: Make alternatives, best AI agents for operations, multi-agent AI platforms compared and AI workflow automation for operations.
Next step
Pick the Relay flow your team misses most and rebuild it in Floowed today. Start free with $80 of credits, no card and no sales call, see how it works, or talk to us.