head to head · open source
LiveKit vs Windmill
LiveKit has 21,994 GitHub stars, 2,526 forks, 189 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Windmill has 18,360 stars, 1,136 forks, 852 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LiveKit leads on adoption by 20% (21,994 vs 18,360 stars). LiveKit is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Windmill is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. LiveKit has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, Windmill 6%. LiveKit 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
| LiveKit | Windmill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 18K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LiveKit if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 LiveKit
LiveKit: Realtime infrastructure for voice, video, and AI agents LiveKit is an open source platform for building voice, video, and physical AI agents. This repository is the LiveKit server: a scalable, distributed WebRTC SFU that moves realtime audio, video, and data between people, devices, and AI models. The SDKs, agents frameworks, and companion services are linked in the table at the bottom of this page. LiveKit's server is written in Go, using the awesome Pion WebRTC implementation. [!IMPORTANT] If you're building Voice AI, LiveKit Agents is the SDK for code first realtime voice agents. STT, LLM, TTS, turn…
read the full LiveKit 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 LiveKit or Windmill more popular?
LiveKit has 21,994 GitHub stars and Windmill has 18,360. LiveKit has the larger community by that measure.
Are LiveKit and Windmill free?
Both are open source. LiveKit is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Windmill has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between LiveKit and Windmill?
LiveKit is written in Go 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, LiveKit or Windmill?
Choose LiveKit if you want the larger community (21,994 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Windmill if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.