Node-RED vs Microsoft Power Automate

Node-RED

Node-RED's Admin HTTP API covers flows, nodes and settings in 20 documented methods, with read and write permissions per resource and a revision check on deploys. It has no OpenAPI file, no pagination and no SDK, and a default install accepts API calls from anyone who can reach port 1880.

Microsoft Power Automate

Cloud flows in a solution are rows an agent can read and write through the Dataverse Web API under Entra ID OAuth and security roles, with published limits and a 99.9 per cent SLA. Flows under My flows can't be managed in code, a flow's body is one hand-built JSON string, and setup needs a tenant administrator.

Node-RED

1. Call GET /auth/login first. An empty object means no authentication is set and every Admin API call is open
2. Send Node-RED-API-Version: v2 and the last rev on POST /flows, and re-read the flows on a 409
3. Set Node-RED-Deployment-Type to nodes or flows to restart only what changed. The default full stops every node
4. Prefer GET /flow/:id and PUT /flow/:id for one tab. GET /flows returns every node in the runtime
5. Treat flows.write and nodes.write as code execution on the host. Function nodes run JavaScript and POST /nodes installs npm modules

Microsoft Power Automate

1. Filter workflows on category eq 5 for cloud flows, and add $select, because clientdata holds the whole definition
2. Flows created through the API start with statecode 0 (off). The docs say to turn the flow on before use
3. Put the flow in a solution first. Flows that sit only under My flows are outside the supported API
4. On 429 wait the Retry-After seconds. Reads of flowruns count against the daily Power Platform request allowance
5. Treat an HTTP trigger URL with sig= as a secret, and prefer the tenant or named-user trigger modes with a bearer token for https://service.flow.microsoft.com/