Dify vs Windmill

Side-by-side comparison of two AI agent tools

Short answer

  • Dify is growing faster: +3,659 GitHub stars in the last 30 days vs +317 for Windmill.
  • Pick Dify for: production-ready platform for agentic workflow development. Pick Windmill for: open-source developer platform to power your entire infra and turn scripts into webhooks, workflows and UIs.

From GitHub data refreshed daily.

Difyfree

Production-ready platform for agentic workflow development.

Windmillopen-source

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.

Metrics

DifyWindmill
Stars157.7k18.1k
Star velocity /mo3.7k317.0744680851064
Commits (90d)2.3k1.2k
Releases (6m)910
Overall score0.89152161940656670.8251537378999719

Pros

  • +生产级稳定性和企业级功能支持，适合大规模部署应用
  • +可视化工作流编辑器，大幅降低 AI 应用开发门槛
  • +活跃的开源社区和丰富的生态系统，持续更新迭代
  • +Multi-language support with automatic UI generation from scripts in Python, TypeScript, Go, Bash, SQL, and more
  • +High performance workflow engine claiming 13x faster execution than Airflow
  • +Self-hostable open-source solution with AGPLv3 license providing full control and customization

Cons

  • -学习曲线存在，需要时间熟悉平台的各种组件和配置
  • -复杂工作流的性能优化需要深入了解平台机制
  • -自部署版本需要一定的运维能力和资源投入
  • -AGPLv3 license may restrict some commercial use cases and require careful compliance consideration
  • -Being a comprehensive platform may introduce complexity for simple automation tasks
  • -Self-hosting requires infrastructure management and maintenance overhead

Use Cases

  • •企业客服机器人和智能助手的快速开发与部署
  • •复杂业务流程的自动化处理，如文档分析、数据处理等
  • •知识库问答系统和内容生成应用的构建
  • •Building internal APIs and webhooks from existing scripts without additional infrastructure
  • •Creating automated workflows for background jobs and data processing pipelines
  • •Developing low-code internal applications with custom UIs for non-technical team members
View Dify DetailsView Windmill Details

FAQ

Which is more popular, Dify or Windmill?
Dify has more GitHub stars (157,652 vs 18,077).
Which is more actively developed, Dify or Windmill?
Dify had more commits in the last 90 days (2,316 vs 1,246).
Should I use Dify or Windmill?
Compare their capabilities, limitations and "best for" notes above. Trying each on a small task is the fastest way to decide.