What is Windmill?
Windmill is a fast, open-source workflow engine and developer platform. It's an alternative to the likes of Retool, Superblocks, n8n, Airflow, Prefect, Kestra and Temporal, designed to build comprehensive internal tools (endpoints, workflows, UIs). It supports coding in TypeScript, Python, Go, PHP, Bash, SQL and Rust, or any Docker image, alongside intuitive low-code builders, featuring:
- An execution runtime for scalable, low-latency function execution across a worker fleet.
- An orchestrator for assembling these functions into efficient, low-latency flows, using either a low-code builder or YAML.
- An app builder for creating data-centric dashboards, utilizing low-code or JS frameworks like React.
Windmill supports both UI-based operations via its webIDE and low-code builders, as well as CLI deployments from a Git repository, aligning with your preferred development style.
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Develop faster
Focus on code that matters: your critical business logic, from data transformation to internal API calls, starts as scripts and SQL files. Windmill transforms these into scalable microservices and tools without the usual heavy lifting.
Boilerplate code is eliminated as Windmill takes care of the repetitive work of building UIs, handling errors, scaling logic, and managing dependencies, making these aspects more streamlined.
Core features
An efficient runtime: execute code across languages with minimal overhead and instant starts.
Smart dependency and input management: automatically generate lockfiles and input specs from your code, ensuring consistent dependency versions and simplified input handling.
Dynamic web IDE and Low-Code builders: create scripts with advanced editing tools and auto-generated UIs, build flows with a drag-and-drop interface, and design apps without extensive coding.
Enterprise-Ready: Windmill offers robust permissioning, secret management, OAuth, and more, wrapped in an enterprise-grade platform.
Integrations and Automations: with webhooks, an open API, and a scheduler, Windmill fits seamlessly into your infrastructure, allowing for extensive automation capabilities.
Compare
While other frameworks offer pieces of what Windmill does, none combine its comprehensive feature set with full open-source accessibility. Whether compared to workflow engines like Temporal and Airflow or UI builders like Retool, Windmill stands out for its scalability, open APIs, and ease of use.
Windmill is an open-source, self-hostable platform that marries the flexibility of code with the speed of low-code solutions, enabling seamless automation of repetitive tasks.
Learn how Windmill compares to other products like Retool, Superblocks, n8n, Airflow, Prefect, Kestra and Temporal.