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🛠️Developer Tools · Workflow OrchestrationOpen SourceFreemium
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Windmill

Code-first orchestration platform: turn Python, TypeScript, Go or Bash scripts into workflows, internal apps and APIs — self-hostable in minutes

Website:https://www.windmill.dev/
Pricing:Freemium — open-source self-hosted core; Windmill cloud & enterprise from paid tiers
License:AGPL-3.0 / Apache-2.0 core; proprietary enterprise features
Platform:Web UI, CLI, REST APIs, autogenerated webhooks
Hosting:Self-hosted (Docker) or Windmill cloud
Account:Not required
Source:Repository ↗
Added:2026-10-14
Last verified:October 2026
Visit website ↗Source code
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Website: https://www.windmill.dev/ · Source: GitHub · Type: Open-source company (Paris), ~9,800 known instances, funded by cloud & enterprise tiers

Why it exists

Every team accumulates glue work — invoices to reconcile, accounts to sync, reports to generate — that nobody wants to build a frontend for and nobody wants to run from cron. Airflow is a YAML tax, Zapier is a subscription to limitations, and "just a script" doesn't scale to coworkers. Windmill's thesis: keep the code as the source of truth, and automate everything around it — runners, scheduling, permissions, UIs, flows, rollback. The result is an internal-software platform where a Python or TypeScript function becomes a monitored, permission-checked, user-facing app in minutes.

Main features

  • Polyglot scripts — Python, TypeScript, Go, PHP, Bash and SQL as first-class building blocks, with typed parameters and dependency handling.
  • Flows (DAGs) — compose scripts into workflows with branches, loops, error handling, retries and approvals; visual editor without lock-in.
  • Autogenerated UIs — every script and flow instantly gets a form-style UI from its parameters; share it with non-engineers.
  • Low-code apps builder — drag-and-drop custom dashboards and internal tools wired to your scripts and data.
  • Schedules & webhooks — cron anything; every script/flow gets an auto-generated webhook endpoint for event-driven glue.
  • Fast workers — Rust-based execution engine; workers run one job at a time with full CPU/memory, no container-per-run overhead.
  • Git-based collaboration — deploy from Git, review changes, manage workspaces, permissions and secrets properly.
  • AI agents — build agentic workflows with the same primitives (the site now markets "agents" as a first-class use case).

Who it's for

  • Engineering teams drowning in cron jobs, Airflow configs and Slack-ops requests.
  • Internal-tools teams that want UIs without leaving the codebase.
  • Startups that need "the backend your product deserves but nobody budgeted for" — billing syncs, ETL, AI pipelines.
  • Self-hosters who want serious orchestration on one Docker host.

How it compares

  • Airflow / Prefect / Dagster — Python-centric data orchestration; Windmill is broader (apps, webhooks, multi-language) and dramatically lighter to run.
  • Zapier / Make / n8n — node-based automation; Windmill trades the toy-box UI for actual code and your own infrastructure, while n8n sits between the two.
  • Retool — internal app builder; Windmill's apps are code-first and bundled with the orchestrator, not a separate subscription.
  • GitHub Actions — great for CI, wrong for operational jobs; Windmill is the "always-on" sibling with proper permissions and secrets.

Notes

  • Self-hosting is genuinely quick ("3 minutes" per the site) via Docker Compose; the OSS core is AGPLv3 (some paths Apache-2.0) with a separate proprietary license for enterprise features.
  • Security model is thought through: granular permissions per script/flow, variable & secret management, approval steps for sensitive runs.
  • The free cloud tier exists (one workspace) for trying it without self-hosting.
  • If your whole world is pure data pipelines in Python, Dagster/Airflow still fit; the moment you need apps, APIs and multi-language glue, Windmill wins.