Relay.app Review 2026: App, Career, AI, Funding & FAQs

Relay.app is one of the easiest ways we have tested to turn a repetitive work task into an AI agent that still checks in with a human before it acts, and after two weeks of building real workflows on it, we think it earns a solid 4.0 out of 5.

What is Relay.app

Relay.app is a workflow automation platform built around AI agents and what the company calls human in the loop steps. In plain terms, that means you can let an agent draft a reply, sort a lead, or update a record, but you still get a moment to approve, edit, or reject that action before it goes live. This is the detail that sets Relay apart from older automation tools like Zapier and Make, which mostly move data from one app to another without any pause for a human to weigh in.

The platform was founded by Jacob Bank, a former Director of Product Management at Google who led teams behind Gmail and Google Calendar. That background shows up in the product. Relay's interface feels closer to a Google Workspace tool than to the dense, wire heavy canvases that older automation platforms are known for.

Building a workflow in Relay starts with a simple description of what you want to happen. From there you add triggers, connect the apps involved, and insert AI steps where the agent should read, write, summarize, or decide something. You can drop in an approval step at any point, so a human teammate reviews the output before the workflow continues. Relay currently connects to well over a hundred apps, including Gmail, Slack, Notion, HubSpot, Salesforce, and both ChatGPT and Claude as AI providers.

Career: The Team Behind Relay.app

Relay.app is a lean, San Francisco based company, sitting at roughly 25 to 30 employees as of 2026. The founding team includes people who previously worked on product, design, and engineering for Gmail and Google Calendar, which explains why the product feels unusually polished for a company this size.

On the careers side, Relay hires across engineering, product, customer success, and go to market roles, and open positions typically show up on the company's own careers page and on LinkedIn rather than on general job boards. Reviews from current and former staff describe a fast moving, product obsessed culture where small teams own big parts of the roadmap, which tracks with how quickly the company has shipped new AI features over the past year.

For job seekers researching the brand, it is worth noting that the name Relay is shared by a few unrelated companies, including a small business banking app and a frontline communication platform. If you are specifically looking at automation and AI agent roles, make sure the listing points back to relay.app and not one of these other businesses.

AI: How Relay.app Uses Artificial Intelligence

AI sits at the center of what Relay does, not as a bolt on feature but as the engine of the product. Every workflow can include AI actions that read incoming data, summarize it, draft a response, or make a judgment call, and Relay lets you choose which model powers that step, including options from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

What we found genuinely useful is Relay's approach to combining AI with fixed, rule based logic. Rather than handing every decision to an open ended agent, which can get expensive and unpredictable, Relay encourages you to convert repeatable processes into deterministic automations and only use flexible AI reasoning where it is actually needed. Jacob Bank has spoken publicly about this trade off, noting that for most day to day admin and go to market tasks, a well structured automation beats an overly flexible agent on both cost and reliability.

The human in the loop design is Relay's clearest AI differentiator. You can require a teammate to approve an AI generated email, a data change, or a social post before it goes out, which matters a great deal for teams that are experimenting with AI but are not ready to remove people from the process entirely.

Funding: Who Backs Relay.app

Relay.app has raised a total of roughly $38 million since its founding. The company started with a $5 million seed round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Neo and BoxGroup. In 2023, Relay closed a $3.1 million extension backed by Andreessen Horowitz, and in early 2025 it raised a $35 million Series A round, once again led by Andreessen Horowitz.

That level of backing places Relay among the better funded independent players in the workflow automation space, sitting alongside competitors such as Zapier, Make, n8n, Tray.ai, and Workato. Investors have pointed to the growing complexity of modern software stacks, with the average company now juggling well over a hundred separate apps, as the reason automation tools like Relay have room to keep growing.

User Experience: What It Feels Like to Actually Use Relay.app

This is where Relay.app earns most of its praise. Reviewers across independent software directories consistently describe the interface as clean, intuitive, and quick to learn, even for people with no coding or automation background. Building your first workflow takes a few minutes, not hours, and the platform nudges you toward good habits by flagging, for example, when an integration requires a paid plan on the other app before you waste time setting it up.

Users also point to Relay's tutorials, webinars, and support team as genuinely helpful rather than just marketing filler. Several reviewers mentioned that Relay's team, including its founder, takes an active role in educating customers on how to think about automation, not just how to click through the tool.

The trade off shows up in integration depth. Compared with a giant like Zapier, which connects to thousands of apps, Relay's library of just over a hundred connectors is smaller, and a handful of reviewers noted this as their main limitation. For most small and mid sized teams working with mainstream tools like Gmail, Slack, HubSpot, and Notion, this rarely becomes a real problem. For teams relying on niche or industry specific software, it is worth checking Relay's integration list before committing.

Pricing follows a freemium, usage based structure. The free plan is generous enough for testing and light personal use, paid plans for individuals and small teams generally start in the high teens to high twenties per month, and team or business tiers scale up from there based on workflow steps and AI credits used. Enterprise pricing is custom and requires talking to sales.

Relay.app Profile

Nubia Magazine Verdict

Our 4.0 rating reflects a tool that is genuinely easy to pick up, backed by credible investors, and thoughtfully designed around human oversight of AI, weighed against a smaller integration library than the biggest names in the category.

Frequently Asked Questions About Relay.app

1. What exactly is Relay.app used for?

Relay.app is used to automate repetitive work tasks by connecting different apps, such as Gmail, Slack, Notion, and HubSpot, and inserting AI steps that can draft content, sort information, or make simple decisions. Many teams use it for tasks like managing email replies, updating CRM records, onboarding new hires, or publishing social content on a schedule.

2. Is Relay.app free to use?

Yes. Relay.app offers a free plan that includes a set number of workflow steps and AI credits each month, which is enough for testing the platform or running a few light automations. Paid plans unlock higher usage limits and, on the Team tier and above, features for collaborating with other people on shared workflows.

3. Who owns Relay.app and who founded it?

Relay.app was founded by Jacob Bank, a former Director of Product Management at Google who previously led product for Gmail and Google Calendar. He also co-founded Timeful, a smart calendar startup that Google acquired in 2015.

4. How much funding has Relay.app raised?

Relay.app has raised approximately $38 million to date, including a seed round led by Khosla Ventures and a $35 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz in early 2025.

5. Is Relay.app the same as Relay, the business banking app?

No. Relay.app is an AI workflow automation platform based in San Francisco, while Relay (relayfi.com) is a separate business banking product for small business owners. There is also a Relay for frontline team communication. All three companies simply share a common name, so it helps to double check the website when researching any of them.

6. What makes Relay.app different from Zapier or Make?

Relay's main differentiator is its human in the loop design, which lets you add approval steps so a person reviews an AI generated action before it goes live. It is generally considered easier to learn than Zapier or Make for non technical users, though it currently supports fewer integrations than either of those more established platforms.

7. Does Relay.app work with ChatGPT and Claude?

Yes. Relay.app lets you choose which AI model powers a given workflow step, with support for models from OpenAI, Anthropic's Claude, and Google, so you are not locked into a single AI provider.

8. Is Relay.app good for beginners with no technical background?

Yes, this is one of the platform's strongest points. Reviewers and users repeatedly describe Relay.app as approachable for people without a coding or IT background, thanks to its simple workflow builder, guided tutorials, and helpful support team.

9. Is Relay.app secure enough for business use?

Relay.app is SOC 2 compliant and offers encryption for data at rest and in transit, along with workspace level access controls. The company does not publicly confirm HIPAA compliance, so businesses in regulated industries like healthcare should request that documentation directly before signing up.