Relay.app

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Relay.app was a workflow automation platform built around human approval steps, wound down in 2026 after Google hired its founder and staff.

RIP Relay.app

Shut down · July 2026

Relay.app was the workflow automation tool that put a human approval step in the middle of the run — a design that aged well the moment AI steps arrived and teams needed somewhere safe to park generated output. It raised $8.1M led by Khosla Ventures and a16z and was benchmarked against Zapier, Make and n8n. It died healthy: Google hired founder Jacob Bank as VP of Product for Chrome along with several staff, but bought neither the product nor the brand. Free accounts were deleted on 15 August 2026 and the last paying customers lost access on 14 September 2026.

Last known pricing: Free tier plus paid subscription plans billed through Paddle, metered on workflow steps and AI credits. All subscriptions cancelled 16 July 2026.

Is Relay.app shut down? #

Yes. Relay.app shut down on July 16, 2026 and is no longer available. Its record is preserved in the ToolDirectory.AI graveyard, our hand-reviewed registry of AI tools that shut down or were acquired.

What to use instead

Overview #

Relay.app #

Relay.app was a workflow automation platform built around a premise its rivals treated as an afterthought: that the interesting automations are the ones a human still needs to sign off on. Where Zapier and Make chained steps end to end and hoped for the best, Relay let you drop a human approval step into the middle of a run — a draft waits for review, a refund s for a manager, an outbound email sits until someone confirms the details. The workflow blocked, pinged the right person, and resumed on their decision.

That design aged unusually well once LLM steps arrived. AI-generated content is exactly the kind of output teams do not want firing unattended, and Relay's approval gates gave it somewhere sensible to sit. The platform added AI steps that drafted and classified inline, multi-step "Sequences" for longer-running processes, its own tables for state, and — late in its life — MCP server support, so an assistant could reach into a workflow directly.

Shutdown note (July 2026): Relay.app announced its wind-down on 16 July 2026, closing new signups and free-to-paid upgrades the same day and cancelling every paying subscription with immediate effect. Free accounts and their data were permanently deleted after 15 August 2026; paying customers kept full access at no charge until 14 September 2026, after which their accounts and data were deleted too. Annual customers received prorated refunds for the unused remainder of their billing period, and every workspace was given an extra 25,000 steps and 10,000 AI credits per month through the transition. Workflows, Sequences and MCP servers could be exported as JSON alongside run history and tables as CSV, so teams could rebuild elsewhere.

Why it ended: not for want of a product. Founder Jacob Bank and several Relay staff were hired by Google, where Bank became VP of Product for Chrome, leading product and developer relations. Google did not buy the product or the brand — this was a hire, not an acquisition, and Relay.app was switched off rather than absorbed. Bank had been at Google once before, for six years, ending as Director of Product Management for Gmail, Calendar and Chat, where he shipped Smart Reply, Smart Compose and Nudging; Google had acquired his earlier company, the smart-calendar assistant Timeful, in 2015.

Key Features

Human-in-the-loop approval steps that d a run until someone signed off
Multi-step Sequences for long-running processes rather than single triggers
AI steps that drafted, summarised and classified inline mid-workflow
Built-in tables for workflow state, exportable as CSV
MCP server support so AI assistants could drive workflows directly
Integrations across Gmail, Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Airtable and the usual SaaS spread

Ideal Use Case

Operations and revenue teams automating processes with real consequences — customer emails, refunds, approvals, onboarding — where a fully unattended run was the risk rather than the goal. It suited teams who had outgrown simple trigger-action automation but did not want to hand judgement calls to a script.

Why it mattered

Relay.app was the clearest expression of a bet the rest of the category is now making anyway: that as automation absorbs more AI-generated output, the scarce resource is not more steps but trustworthy places to put a human in the loop. It raised $8.1M across rounds led by Khosla Ventures and a16z, came out of beta in 2023, and was routinely benchmarked against Zapier, Make and n8n despite being a fraction of their size. Its end says less about the product than about the pull of a VP role on the Chrome team.

FAQ

Is Relay.app still available? No. Free accounts were deleted after 15 August 2026 and paying customers lost access on 14 September 2026, after which all remaining accounts and data were permanently deleted.

Why did Relay.app shut down? Founder Jacob Bank and several staff were hired by Google, where Bank became VP of Product for Chrome. Google hired the people but did not acquire the product or brand, so Relay.app was wound down rather than absorbed.

Was Relay.app acquired by Google? No. Reporting is explicit that this was a hire rather than an acquisition — Google took on staff, not the company's product or brand.

Did paying customers get refunds? Yes. Subscriptions were cancelled effective 16 July 2026 with no further charges, annual customers received prorated refunds for the unused remainder of their term, and everyone kept free access until 14 September 2026.

Could you export your data? Yes. Workflows, Sequences and MCP servers exported as JSON along with AI prompts, run history was downloadable, and tables came out as CSV.

tl;dr

Relay.app was the workflow automation tool that built human approval into the middle of a run, which made it a natural home for AI steps teams did not want firing unattended. Khosla- and a16z-backed, $8.1M raised. Wound down from 16 July 2026 after Google hired its founder and staff — a hire, not an acquisition — with the lights fully off on 14 September 2026.