Open-source alternative to Microsoft Copilot Studio: the short answer
If your agents are built in Copilot Studio and you want to cut metered cost or decide where those agents run, the short answer is to split the work by job: Dify covers agent and RAG building, and n8n covers workflow automation. Dify provides a visual builder for agents, retrieval pipelines, prompts and model routing, and it can run on your own Docker or Kubernetes hosts. n8n handles triggers, scheduled jobs and multi-step integrations with business systems, and it is the stronger fit where an agent is mostly a sequence of API calls. Most Copilot Studio estates contain both kinds of work, so plan for both tools rather than forcing one to do the other's job.
The part that does not move automatically is grounding. When an agent runs under a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, answers drawn from SharePoint, Teams or Microsoft Graph do not consume Copilot Studio capacity, and that is a licensing boundary, not a technical feature you can copy. Dify and n8n will need their own connectors, identity mapping and permission model for each source, and per-user access rules from Entra ID will not carry over unless you rebuild them. Confirm with your Microsoft account team exactly which of your agents depend on that grounding before you size the replacement.
Check the license terms before you commit. The self-hosted Community edition of Dify is limited to a single workspace, so multi-team or multi-tenant use needs the Enterprise edition or a different design. n8n's Sustainable Use License permits internal business use but restricts distribution and any file marked .ee requires an n8n Enterprise License, including features such as SSO and LDAP that you may expect to have. Have legal review how each tool will be used in your organization, and confirm current terms directly with each vendor.
Which Copilot Studio capabilities map to which open-source tools
This table maps the main Copilot Studio capabilities to Dify, n8n, Onyx and LibreChat, and flags where no open-source tool matches directly. Read each row as a question to test in a proof of concept, since fit depends on the agents you have actually built and the systems they call.
| Capability | Dify | n8n | Onyx or LibreChat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agent authoring with a visual builder | Visual workflow and agent builder with a prompt IDE; confirm agent features against your Dify version | Visual canvas for workflows; agent-style flows need to be confirmed for your use case | LibreChat offers an agent framework with MCP support; Onyx offers agents and actions in its Community Edition |
| Generative answers over knowledge sources | RAG pipelines over uploaded or indexed documents; confirm the connectors you need | Not a native RAG product; typically paired with a vector store or a retrieval service | Onyx is built for search and RAG over connected sources, with permissions from 50+ applications |
| Classic topics and trigger-based conversations | Chat apps and workflow triggers; topic-style branching must be rebuilt as workflow logic | Webhook and schedule triggers handle event-driven flows well; conversational topics need custom build | Limited; LibreChat and Onyx are chat-first rather than topic-tree builders |
| Custom actions and connectors | Tool and API calls from agents; custom tools must be written and tested | Large integration catalog; confirm each service you need, since Copilot Studio connectors do not carry over | MCP tools in LibreChat; Onyx actions must be confirmed against your APIs |
| Microsoft Graph tenant grounding | Gap: no native Graph grounding; Graph calls must be built as custom tools with delegated permissions | Gap: Graph access must be built through HTTP nodes and an Entra app registration | Onyx's Microsoft connectors index SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook and Teams content; confirm permission sync in your tenant |
| Channels and publishing to Teams or web | Web app and API publishing; Teams publishing needs custom integration and must be confirmed | Webhooks and chat integrations exist; Teams delivery must be built and tested | LibreChat and Onyx provide their own web interfaces; Teams embedding is not a native feature |
| Analytics and conversation logs | LLMOps monitoring and logs in the console; confirm retention and export for your audit needs | Execution history per workflow; confirm the retention settings on your plan | Admin and conversation features vary by product; confirm export and audit log options before relying on them |
| SSO and admin controls | SSO with OIDC, SAML and OAuth2 is in Enterprise only; Community is limited to one workspace | SAML SSO is available on Business and Enterprise plans only | Onyx supports Google OAuth, OIDC, SAML and SCIM; LibreChat supports OAuth2, LDAP and email |
| Metered billing and capacity limits | No Copilot Credit metering when self-hosted; model API usage is billed by your providers | Community edition is free to self-host; internal business use is permitted under the Sustainable Use License | Usage is driven by your model providers and infrastructure, not a platform meter; confirm license terms before commercial use |
When Dify, n8n or a combination fits each agent type
Copilot Studio mixes agent reasoning, knowledge grounding and workflow triggers in one product. Self-hosted replacements split those jobs, so the right choice depends on which job dominates each agent. The cards below separate LLM-centric agents from event-driven integrations and show where the paid tiers of each tool change the picture.
Dify for LLM agents and RAG
Dify is built for prompt-driven agents, retrieval pipelines and a visual prompt IDE, and it exposes backend-as-a-service APIs that your applications can call. It fits agents whose core is reasoning over documents rather than moving data between systems. Check the multi-tenant restriction in its license: the source cannot run a multi-tenant environment, meaning several workspaces serving separate tenants, without written authorization, and the logo and copyright in the console must stay intact.
Dify Enterprise for SSO and workspaces
The Community edition is limited to a single workspace, so organizations with several business units or formal sign-in requirements will need the paid Enterprise edition. Enterprise adds SSO over OpenID Connect, SAML and OAuth2, with identity providers such as Microsoft Entra ID and Okta, plus multiple workspaces and Kubernetes high availability. Ask the vendor for a written quote, because Enterprise pricing is custom.
n8n for event-driven workflows
n8n suits agents that start from a webhook, a schedule or a record change and then call many systems, such as a ticket update followed by a CRM write. It advertises more than 1,500 integrations, which covers much of the connector work Copilot Studio customers do with premium connectors. Its Sustainable Use License permits internal business use only, so confirm that any product you ship to outside customers falls outside that grant, and treat every .ee file as requiring an n8n Enterprise License.
n8n SSO and high availability tiers
SAML single sign-on and LDAP, Git-based environments and log streaming are included only in the Business and Enterprise plans. Multi-main setup for high availability is restricted to Enterprise self-hosted deployments, so a Community install runs a single main instance. In queue mode, the main instance's encryption key must be shared with every worker and webhook processor, and losing or mismanaging that key affects access to stored credentials.
Combined pattern: n8n triggers, Dify reasons
A common split uses n8n to receive events, fetch records and handle retries, then passes a structured payload to a Dify agent that drafts or classifies content and returns it for the next step. Each platform keeps its own credential store, so map which secrets live where and who can change them. Test failure paths in both tools, because an error in the middle of the chain leaves partial state that neither platform rolls back by default.
Confirm licenses before you choose
Both products use source-available terms, so the choice is partly legal. Dify's terms restrict multi-tenant operation and logo removal, while n8n's terms restrict use to internal purposes and exclude .ee code. Ask counsel to review your intended use, including whether agents serve customers or only staff, before building production agents on either platform. Record the answer alongside the architecture decision.
What depends on Microsoft Graph grounding and must be rebuilt
Agents built in Copilot Studio that answer from company content are not just prompts with a model behind them. Their answers depend on Microsoft Graph grounding, which returns only content the asking user's Microsoft Entra account can already access. Microsoft Learn states that work-based Copilot Chat grounding requires a Microsoft Copilot license, and that with such a license, agent use in Copilot Chat, Teams or SharePoint for Microsoft Graph tenant grounding does not count against the Copilot Studio pack or meter. Those two facts mean that a self-hosted replacement must supply its own retrieval layer, and that the access checks which Graph performed implicitly now have to be designed, configured and tested on purpose.
A self-hosted retrieval layer such as Onyx can index SharePoint, OneDrive, Outlook, Teams and other sources through its connectors and can sync document permissions so that search results respect the source's access rules. Permission sync is not a single switch to trust. Test it per source, with at least one standard user, one user without access and one user whose access was removed recently, and confirm that the results match what the same user sees in the original application. Record the sync interval, because revoked access may remain visible until the next sync completes. Confirm this behavior in the current Onyx documentation for each connector you plan to use rather than assuming it.
Before scoping the rebuild, inventory every agent. For each one, list its knowledge sources, whether it uses Graph tenant grounding, classic answers, generative answers or a premium connector, and which identity it runs under: the signed-in user, a service account or a fixed connection. Agents that act as a service identity need a different permission model from agents that answer for the signed-in user, and that choice must be made explicitly in the new platform, for example through the Dify or n8n credentials and the identity provider's group mappings. Agents that cannot be mapped to a clear identity model should be redesigned before migration, not copied across.
Moving agents, connectors and credentials out of Copilot Studio
This sequence turns a Copilot Studio estate into a tested inventory, rebuilt connectors held in a self-hosted builder, and a controlled cutover that each channel passes before its old agent is retired.
Inventory agents, topics and channels
The Copilot Studio owner or platform engineer exports a list of every agent, with its topics, actions, knowledge sources, channels (Teams, web, SharePoint or other) and the people who maintain it. Record which agents are used, by whom and how often, because unused agents are often better retired than migrated. The step is done when every agent has one line in a shared inventory signed off by the business owner.
Classify each agent by grounding and connectors
For each inventory line, mark whether the agent relies on Microsoft Graph tenant grounding, classic or generative answers over SharePoint, or premium connectors that call external systems. Agents that depend on Graph grounding need a new retrieval source, such as Onyx connected to the same SharePoint or OneDrive content with permissions synced. Agents that only call APIs can usually move to an n8n or Dify workflow. The output is a migration table with a target platform and a named owner per agent.
Rebuild connectors in n8n or Dify
Engineers rebuild each action as a workflow in n8n or as a tool or workflow node in Dify, using the target system's own API credentials and scopes. Store secrets in the store your team has chosen, not in workflow text or prompts, and confirm that each credential is scoped to the minimum the agent needs. Before go-live, n8n requires that the main instance's encryption key be shared with every worker and webhook processor, and changing the Dify SECRET_KEY after deployment logs out all users, so set both values once during the build. The check is a test run of each connector against a non-production system.
Configure SSO and role access
The identity team connects the builder's login to the corporate identity provider, using SAML or OIDC where the chosen edition supports it. Confirm the edition first: n8n SAML single sign-on is listed for its Business and Enterprise plans, and Dify SSO is documented for its Enterprise edition. Map admin, maker and user roles to groups so that only approved people can edit agents or read run logs. The output is a test sign-in by one administrator, one maker and one end user.
Run old and new agents in parallel
Keep each Copilot Studio agent live while the rebuilt version runs on a test channel with a pilot group. Compare answers, action results and error handling on the same sample questions, and log every mismatch with its cause. Copilot Studio capacity is enforced monthly and unused credits do not carry over, so confirm with Microsoft how much metered use remains during the overlap. The check is a signed comparison report for each agent with no open critical mismatches.
Cut over channel by channel
Move one channel at a time, such as a single Teams team or a single web page, and point its users to the rebuilt agent while the old one stays available for rollback. Watch error rates, support tickets and workflow execution logs for an agreed period set by the owner. When a channel is stable, disable the Copilot Studio agent for that channel and update the inventory. The output is a dated cutover record per channel.
Retire credentials and export records
After the last channel moves, revoke the connections and service principals that the Copilot Studio agents used, and rotate any credential that was shared with the old platform. Export the conversation and agent history your records policy requires before the old environment is removed, and confirm the retention position with compliance. The step closes when a reviewer can see that no active agent references the old connections and that the exported records are stored where policy requires.
Questions buyers ask before replacing Copilot Studio
What drives the cost of replacing Copilot Studio?
The cost is the work of rebuilding agents plus the platform you run, and it replaces a metered bill. Copilot Studio is billed in Copilot Credits through pay-as-you-go meters, prepurchase plans and prepaid pack subscriptions, according to Microsoft Learn. Self-hosting shifts that spend to four components: a one-time engineering rebuild of agents and connectors, server hosting for the platform, model inference (API fees or GPUs for self-hosted models), and recurring operations such as upgrades, backups and monitoring. Each component rises with the number of agents, connectors, users and model calls. Ask any implementation partner for a quote that separates these components, states what is one-time and what recurs, and names who pays for model usage.
How long does it take to rebuild agents from Copilot Studio?
The duration depends mainly on how many agents and connectors you have, so confirm it during scoping rather than relying on a general figure. Each agent needs its prompts, knowledge sources, actions and channel endpoints recreated in a builder such as Dify or n8n. Each connector to a business system needs its authentication and data mapping rebuilt, and premium connectors in Copilot Studio often have no one-to-one open-source equivalent. Plan for a parallel run period where both systems answer the same test questions. A written scope should list each agent, each connector, the acceptance tests and the cutover criteria before work starts.
Can our internal team replace Copilot Studio without outside help?
A capable platform team can do it, but the work spans several skill areas, and the gaps are usually identity, connectors and operations rather than the builder itself. Dify and n8n are both installable with Docker, and their documentation covers setup. The harder parts are integrating single sign-on, managing secrets and encryption keys, reproducing Microsoft Graph grounding through other connectors, and keeping the platform patched. Many teams split the work: internal staff own the agent logic and data, while an outside team handles hardening, backup and the connector rebuild under a fixed-scope written agreement. DeployOpen plans, implements, hardens, backs up and documents these systems in the client's own infrastructure, and it offers retainers for ongoing upgrades.
What does our team need to provide for the rebuild?
Three inputs decide most of the schedule: identity, data owners and a model decision. On identity, you need to know which provider signs users in, since Dify Enterprise lists SSO through OpenID Connect, SAML and OAuth2 with providers such as Microsoft Entra ID and Okta, and n8n SAML single sign-on is available on its Business and Enterprise plans. Data owners must confirm which sources each agent may read and who approves access. The model decision covers which provider or self-hosted model answers each agent, and whether prompts may leave your network. Gather these before scoping, and record them in the statement of work.
How does the replacement change Copilot Credit consumption?
Copilot Credit metering stops, and usage becomes a cost you control directly. Microsoft Learn states that Copilot Credits are the unit across Copilot Studio capabilities, that purchased capacity is enforced monthly, that unused credits do not carry over, and that usage beyond capacity can lead to service denial. In a self-hosted stack, no credits are consumed. Instead, usage costs appear as model API charges, server capacity and staff time. Note one exception: Microsoft Learn states that with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, certain agent use in Copilot Chat, Teams or SharePoint does not count against the Copilot Studio meter. Confirm which of your agents fall under that rule before you size the replacement.
How do open-source licenses affect commercial use of Dify and n8n?
Both platforms have license limits that matter for commercial use, so have counsel confirm them before deployment. Dify uses the Dify Open Source License, a modified Apache License 2.0 that forbids operating a multi-tenant environment, where one tenant is one workspace, without written authorization, and that forbids removing the logo or copyright information in the console. n8n uses the Sustainable Use License, which permits use only for your own internal business purposes or for non-commercial use. Files with .ee in their name or directory require an n8n Enterprise License. If you plan to serve several customers or business units as separate tenants from one installation, confirm the terms first.
What operational risks should we plan for with n8n queue mode?
The main risks are credential access across workers and the limits of high availability on the free tier. In queue mode, the main instance hands executions through Redis to workers that read and write PostgreSQL, and the main instance's encryption key must be shared with every worker and webhook processor so they can read stored credentials. Losing or mismatching that key breaks workflows, so store it in your secrets manager and back it up. Multi-main setup for high availability is restricted to Enterprise self-hosted deployments. Dify also requires care: changing its SECRET_KEY after deployment logs out all users. Include key handling and backup tests in the scope.
What the Copilot Credit meter replaces and what you pay for instead
Copilot Studio charges for usage in Copilot Credits, which Microsoft Learn describes as the common currency across Copilot Studio capabilities. You can buy them through pay-as-you-go meters, prepurchase plans or prepaid Copilot Credit pack subscriptions. Two rules shape the budget. Purchased capacity is enforced monthly, unused credits do not carry over, and usage beyond what you bought can lead to service denial. Before you renew, pull the last several months of consumption by agent and by channel, check whether agent use in Copilot Chat, Teams or SharePoint is already covered by your Microsoft 365 Copilot license, and decide whether a pack or a meter fits the pattern you see.
A self-hosted build replaces that meter with costs you can see and size yourself. Dify's Docker Compose deployment requires at least 2 CPU cores, 4 GB of RAM and Docker Compose 2.24.0 or later, and it starts several services alongside PostgreSQL, Redis and Weaviate. That is a floor for evaluation, not a production sizing, so ask your platform team to size the host, database and vector store against expected concurrency. n8n's Community edition is free to self-host, but its own license limits internal use and the SSO, LDAP and environment features that most enterprises need sit in the Business and Enterprise plans. Model inference is the largest variable: it is billed per token if you use an API, or paid as GPU hardware and operations if you host models. Engineering and support cover building agents, connectors, upgrades and monitoring, and they recur for as long as the agents run.
DeployOpen does not publish prices. A quote follows from a written scope that names the agents to migrate, the channels they serve, the identity provider, the model hosting choice, the sizing targets and the support level you want. Ask the vendor or partner to separate one-time build work from recurring hosting, license and support costs, and ask for the license tier that each n8n or Dify feature you rely on requires. Compare that quote with your current Copilot Credit consumption over a full renewal period, not a single peak month.
Risks to plan for when the agent layer moves in-house
Moving agents out of Copilot Studio shifts license review, upgrades, security configuration, compliance evidence and connector testing onto your team. The cards below describe each risk, the control or check that addresses it, and the point at which it should be confirmed before go-live.
Open-source license limits on commercial use
Dify's license forbids operating a multi-tenant environment, where one tenant is one workspace, without written authorization, and forbids removing its logo or copyright information in the console. n8n's Sustainable Use License limits use to your own internal business purposes, and files with .ee in their name need an n8n Enterprise License. Have counsel map each planned use, including any agents you offer to partners or subsidiaries, against the LICENSE files before build starts.
Frequent upgrades from Dify and n8n
Dify's releases in 2026 included 1.16.0 on July 17, 1.17.0 on August 25 and 1.17.1 on September 10, so minor versions arrive roughly monthly. Each one can change workflow nodes, plugin behavior or API responses. Assign an owner for release tracking, run upgrades in a staging copy of your workflows and keep a rollback path for the database and volumes before each change.
Sandbox and SSRF configuration
Agents that call URLs or run code need the outbound controls turned on. Dify's SSRF proxy blocks internal and private IP ranges only when SSRF_PROXY settings route traffic through it, and the 1.16.1 release added Squid-based network isolation for the agent sandbox. Test that a tool cannot reach the metadata endpoint, the internal Redis or PostgreSQL ports, or an admin console, and review SECRET_KEY handling so it is set once and stored securely.
Credential encryption across n8n workers
In n8n queue mode, the main instance's encryption key must be shared with every worker and webhook processor so they can read stored credentials. A worker started with a different key fails to decrypt connectors, and a leaked key exposes every stored secret. Keep the key in your secrets manager, rotate it through a planned change, and confirm that worker images are built with the same value.
Loss of Microsoft-managed compliance evidence
Copilot Studio runs inside Microsoft's service, so audit logs, data residency statements and SOC reports come from Microsoft. A self-hosted Dify or n8n stack produces its own logs, retention settings and access records, and none of that is evidence until you collect it. Before retiring the Microsoft service, map each control your auditor expects to a log source, a retention period you set and a named owner. DeployOpen can prepare these controls and evidence for assessments, but auditors and certification bodies issue the opinions.
Connectors that fail without an error
Copilot Studio connectors call Microsoft Graph and premium connectors with the caller's permissions. Rebuilt connectors in Dify or n8n can return empty results, stale data or partial pages after a token expires, a field is renamed or a permission scope is narrower than before, without raising an error. Add scheduled canary queries that compare record counts to the source, alert on zero-result responses and test each connector with a user who has limited access.
Running Copilot Studio and the self-hosted builders side by side
Move agents in stages, not all at once. Start with low-risk agents that answer from a fixed set of documents or call a small number of APIs, rebuild them in Dify or n8n, and run them beside the Copilot Studio originals for a defined test period. Keep agents that depend on Microsoft Graph tenant grounding in Copilot Studio until the retrieval layer that replaces them is validated. For those agents, check which documents each identity can see in the new retrieval layer, compare answers against the Copilot originals on the same test questions, and confirm that permission-trimmed results match. Only switch an agent over once its owner signs off on both the answers and the access behavior.
Timing matters because of licensing. Under Microsoft's rules, agent use in Copilot Chat, Teams or SharePoint for classic answers, generative answers or Microsoft Graph tenant grounding does not count against the Copilot Studio pack or meter when the user holds a Microsoft 365 Copilot license. Agents that run on that license may therefore cost little on the Copilot Studio meter, while the same agents moved to a standalone Copilot Studio subscription would draw Copilot Credits. Before scheduling any cutover, confirm with your Microsoft account team which users hold Copilot licenses, when those licenses renew, and which agents depend on them. Plan the migration of license-dependent agents around renewal dates instead of ahead of them.
Keep a parallel run log for the whole overlap period. Record each agent's owner, the connectors it uses, the model and provider behind it, and the date it moved. Note which Copilot Credit consumption drops after each move, so the business case for the rest of the migration rests on measured usage rather than estimates. When the last agent leaves Copilot Studio, confirm that its credentials, connector connections and any secrets have been removed from the Microsoft side. Decommission the old agents only after the self-hosted versions have run through at least one full billing cycle without incident.
How DeployOpen scopes and delivers a Copilot Studio replacement
The sequence turns a Copilot Studio estate into a written, fixed-scope plan and a set of self-hosted agents and workflows that run in your infrastructure, with hardening, backup and upgrades agreed up front.
Inventory agents, flows and connectors
DeployOpen works with your makers and platform owners to list every agent, topic, flow and connector in use, along with the channels each one publishes to, the data sources it reads and the owners who depend on it. The output is a written inventory that marks which items are Dify agents, which are n8n workflows, which depend on Microsoft Graph grounding and which can be retired. You know the inventory is complete when each owner has confirmed their entries.
Agree the written scope
The inventory becomes the basis for a fixed-scope proposal that states which agents move, which connectors are rebuilt, how identity sign-in and hosting will work, and what is out of scope. Deliverables and acceptance checks are written down before any build work starts. Your procurement and security teams should review the scope, and you know it is agreed when it is signed by both parties.
Decide the platform split for each workload
Using the inventory, DeployOpen recommends where each workload belongs. Agent-style work with retrieval, prompts and tool use usually points to Dify, while event-driven integration across many business systems usually points to n8n, and some estates use both. The decision record covers licensing fit, including the Dify Open Source License and n8n's Sustainable Use License, and whether features you need sit in an Enterprise edition. It is complete when your architects accept the split in writing.
Rebuild connectors and identity in your environment
DeployOpen rebuilds each connector with credentials held in your own secrets handling, and sets up sign-in through your identity provider. For Dify, this includes the SSO model you choose, and for n8n, SAML or OIDC depending on the plan you select. Microsoft Graph grounding is replaced by the data sources you actually index or call, with permissions checked against the source systems. The check that closes this step is a test run in which each rebuilt connector returns the same results as the original for an agreed set of cases.
Deploy and harden in your infrastructure
DeployOpen deploys Dify, n8n or both in your cloud account, data center or private network, using the architecture agreed in scope. Hardening covers the items the vendor documentation calls out, such as the Dify SECRET_KEY, proxy settings for outbound requests, the n8n encryption key shared across queue-mode workers, and access restricted to the networks you define. The step is done when the hardening checklist agreed in scope is complete and evidence for each item is stored with the deployment record.
Set up backup, monitoring and upgrades
DeployOpen configures backups for the databases, file storage and encryption keys that the platforms depend on, and tests a restore before handover. It also sets up monitoring and a documented upgrade routine, since both projects publish releases frequently and each upgrade should be reviewed against your connectors. The check is a successful restore test and a recorded upgrade procedure that your operations team has run once.
Run both platforms in parallel and hand over
Before Copilot Studio capacity or licenses lapse, the new agents run alongside the originals for the users and channels agreed in scope. DeployOpen documents the runbooks, admin tasks and known gaps, and trains the owners who will maintain the system. The step closes when the agreed acceptance tests pass and the owners sign the handover document.
Continue with an optional retainer
If you want ongoing support, DeployOpen offers retainers covering upgrades, security testing and fixes to connectors as source systems change. The retainer scope, response expectations and service levels are written separately and agreed before they begin. You know the arrangement is in place when the retainer terms are signed and the first review date is set.
