head to head · open source
Windmill vs local-deep-research
Windmill has 18,370 GitHub stars, 1,135 forks, 852 open issues and last shipped yesterday. local-deep-research has 9,499 stars, 903 forks, 889 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Windmill leads on adoption by 93% (18,370 vs 9,499 stars). Windmill is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; local-deep-research is written in Python under MIT. Windmill has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, local-deep-research 10%. local-deep-research 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
| Windmill | local-deep-research | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 9.5K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 903 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Windmill if
- You weight community size — 18K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick local-deep-research if
- You want the local-deep-research feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and local-deep-research fits your workflow better
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 →
About local-deep-research
Local Deep Research AI powered research assistant for deep, agentic research Performs deep, agentic research using multiple LLMs and search engines with proper citations 🧪 First open source project — fully local on a single RTX 3090 (Qwen3.6 27B) — to report 95% SimpleQA (n=500) and 77% xbench DeepSearch (n=100) on local hardware. See the r/LocalLLaMA announcement and the benchmark dataset. ▶️ Watch Review by The Art Of The Terminal 🚀 What is Local Deep Research? AI research assistant you control. Run locally for privacy, use any LLM and build your own searchable knowledge base. You own your data and see…
read the full local-deep-research overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Windmill or local-deep-research more popular?
Windmill has 18,370 GitHub stars and local-deep-research has 9,499. Windmill has the larger community by that measure.
Are Windmill and local-deep-research free?
Both are open source. Windmill has no licence declared in this registry, and local-deep-research is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Windmill and local-deep-research?
Windmill is written in Rust and local-deep-research in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Windmill or local-deep-research?
Choose Windmill if you want the larger community (18,370 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose local-deep-research if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.