Side by side

Drools vs OpenL Tablets

Both stand on business rules management software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

Drools

Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted

Drools provides multiple rule-authoring paths alongside DMN and event-processing capabilities. Developers should account for the listed prerequisites and Apache KIE’s incubation status.

Visit Drools

OpenL Tablets connects spreadsheet-based rule authoring with testing, repository controls and several execution options. Note that its downloadable demo is restricted to one user; the product and its parts are licensed under the GNU LGPL.

Visit OpenL Tablets

The facts

	Drools	OpenL Tablets
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	API, Linux, Self-hosted	API, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows
Lowest paid plan	Free or on request	Not published
Plans published	1	None
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	kie.apache.org	openl-tablets.org
On business rules management software	#4 of 18	#8 of 18

Drools: what it does well

DMN engine covers all features at Conformance level 3
Supports stream processing with temporal operators and sliding windows
Rules can be authored in several formats
Free Apache software

What to know first

Requires an IDE, JDK 21 or 17, and Maven 3.9 or later
Apache KIE is still in incubation

OpenL Tablets: what it does well

Supports Excel formats starting with Excel 97.
Offers five types of rule tables.
Rules can run through REST, Kafka or Java interfaces.
Includes unit tests, tracing and what-if analysis.
Repository supports versions, metadata and role-based access.

What to know first

The downloadable demo runs in single-user mode.
The demo uses a local Git repository.
The product and its parts use the GNU LGPL license.

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