8 Best Windmill Alternatives in 2026 (Open Source)
Windmill — Open-source developer platform to power your entire infra and turn scripts into webhooks, workflows and UIs. Fastest workflow engine (13x vs Airflow). Open-source alternative to Retool and Temporal. vs Retool: open-source with code-first approach and 10+ language support; vs Temporal: built-in UI generation and low-code app builder; vs n8n: developer-oriented with real code execution rather than node-based visual programming
Short answer
- Closest match to Windmill: n8n.
- Most actively developed: n8n (3,663 commits in the last 90 days).
- Fastest growing: n8n (+3,991 GitHub stars in the last 30 days).
- No commit in 6+ months: iX, AgentPilot and FastAgency.
These 8 open-source tools do the same job. They are ordered by how closely they match Windmill, with live GitHub data so you can see which projects are actively maintained.
| Tool | GitHub stars | Stars / 30d | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windmill(original) | 18.1k | +317 | 2026-10-01 |
| n8n | 206.5k | +3,991 | 2026-10-02 |
| Temporal | 23.4k | +673 | 2026-10-02 |
| Dify | 157.7k | +3,652 | 2026-10-02 |
| Langflow | 155.5k | +1,452 | 2026-10-01 |
| Flock | 1.1k | +4 | 2026-07-06 |
| iX | 1.0k | 0 | 2024-03-03 |
| AgentPilot | 568 | +5 | 2025-05-15 |
| FastAgency | 548 | +3 | 2025-12-09 |
1. n8n
Fair-code workflow automation platform with native AI capabilities. Combine visual building with custom code, self-host or cloud, 400+ integrations.
What sets it apart: Unlike Zapier (pure no-code, closed-source), n8n combines visual workflow building with inline JavaScript/Python code and self-hosting, making it the go-to for technical teams who need both flexibility and control
Best for: Technical teams building AI-powered workflow automations with visual + code flexibility; Enterprises needing self-hosted automation with SSO and air-gapped deployment
2. Temporal
Temporal service
What sets it apart: Battle-tested durable execution platform (from Uber Cadence lineage) — uniquely guarantees workflow completion even across infrastructure failures, unlike Airflow or Step Functions
Best for: Long-running AI agent workflows needing reliability and retries; Orchestrating complex multi-step AI pipelines with failure recovery
3. Dify
Production-ready platform for agentic workflow development.
What sets it apart: Unlike LangGraph (code-first orchestration), Dify offers a complete visual IDE combining workflow builder, RAG pipeline, prompt engineering, and production monitoring in one platform — the Vercel of LLM apps
Best for: Teams building RAG-powered chatbots and AI apps with visual workflow and no backend coding; Product teams who need LLMOps monitoring alongside app development in one platform
4. Langflow
Langflow is a powerful tool for building and deploying AI-powered agents and workflows.
What sets it apart: Best visual builder for LLM workflows with direct MCP server deployment — more production-ready than Flowise with API-first architecture
Best for: Rapid prototyping of AI agent workflows with visual builder; Non-developers building LLM applications without coding
5. Flock
Desktop multi-agent harness with visual workflows, built with Rust, Tauri, React, and langgraph-rust
What sets it apart: vs Dify/Flowise: native human-in-the-loop approval, subgraph nodes for modular reuse, and MCP protocol support for flexible tool integration
Best for: Teams building conversational AI with visual workflow design; Organizations needing human-in-the-loop agent workflows
6. iX
Autonomous GPT-4 agent platform
What sets it apart: vs LangChain/AutoGen: visual no-code drag-and-drop editor with native multi-agent orchestration and horizontal worker scaling — design complex agent workflows visually instead of writing code
Best for: Building custom multi-agent teams with visual no-code editor; Rapid prototyping of AI workflows without coding; Organizations needing self-hosted parallel agent execution at scale
7. AgentPilot
A versatile workflow automation platform to create, organize, and execute AI workflows, from a single LLM to complex AI-driven workflows.
What sets it apart: vs ChatGPT/Claude desktop: local multi-agent workflow builder with graph-based design, 20+ LLM providers via LiteLLM, branching chats, and built-in multi-language code interpreter
Best for: Power users building complex multi-agent workflows on desktop; Developers wanting visual graph-based agent orchestration with code execution
8. FastAgency
The fastest way to bring multi-agent workflows to production.
What sets it apart: vs raw AutoGen/AG2: production deployment framework with unified interface, built-in testing, and FastAPI/NATS.io adapters for scaling agent workflows
Best for: Teams deploying AG2/AutoGen workflows to production; Projects needing unified console + web interfaces for agent workflows
FAQ
- What are the best alternatives to Windmill?
- The closest open-source alternatives to Windmill are n8n, Temporal and Dify, followed by Langflow, Flock and iX. They are ranked by how closely they match what Windmill does.
- Which Windmill alternative is the most popular?
- n8n has the most GitHub stars among Windmill alternatives, with 206,500 stars.
- Which Windmill alternative is the most actively maintained?
- By recent activity, n8n (3,663 commits in the last 90 days) is the most actively developed alternative.