head to head · open source
Lightpanda vs Windmill
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars, 1,999 forks, 98 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Windmill has 18,360 stars, 1,136 forks, 852 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Lightpanda leads on adoption by 123% (40,882 vs 18,360 stars). Lightpanda is written in Zig under AGPL-3.0; Windmill is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. Lightpanda has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Windmill 6%. Windmill was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Lightpanda | Windmill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 18K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Zig | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Lightpanda if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Zig
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Windmill if
- You want the Windmill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Windmill fits your workflow better
About Lightpanda
Lightpanda Browser The headless browser built from scratch for AI agents and automation. Not a Chromium fork. Not a WebKit patch. A new browser, written in Zig.   Benchmarks Requesting 933 real web pages over the network on a AWS EC2 m5.large instance. See benchmark details. Quick start Install Package Managers Latest nightly from Homebrew: Latest nightly from Arch Linux User Repository: Download from the nightly builds You can download the last binary from the nightly builds for Linux and MacOS for both x86 64 and aarch64. For Linux Verify the binary before running anything: Linux aarch64 is also available…
read the full Lightpanda overview →
About Windmill
Open source developer platform for internal code: APIs, background jobs, workflows and UIs. Self hostable alternative to Retool, Pipedream, Superblocks and a simplified Temporal with autogenerated UIs and custom UIs to trigger workflows and scripts as internal apps. Scripts are turned into sharable UIs automatically, and can be composed together into flows or used into richer apps built with low code. Supported languages: Python, TypeScript, Go, Bash, SQL, GraphQL, PowerShell, Rust, and more. Try it Website Docs Discord Hub Contributing Windmill Developer platform for APIs, background jobs, workflows and UIs…
read the full Windmill overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Lightpanda or Windmill more popular?
Lightpanda has 40,882 GitHub stars and Windmill has 18,360. Lightpanda has the larger community by that measure.
Are Lightpanda and Windmill free?
Both are open source. Lightpanda is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Windmill has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Lightpanda and Windmill?
Lightpanda is written in Zig and Windmill in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Lightpanda or Windmill?
Choose Lightpanda if you want the larger community (40,882 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Windmill if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.