head to head · open source
Windmill vs open-claude-cowork
Windmill has 17,982 GitHub stars, 1,097 forks, 852 open issues and last shipped today. open-claude-cowork has 4,359 stars, 735 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Windmill leads on adoption by 313% (17,982 vs 4,359 stars). Windmill is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; open-claude-cowork is written in JavaScript under MIT. Windmill has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, open-claude-cowork 17%. 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
| Windmill | open-claude-cowork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-05-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 735 |
| 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 open-claude-cowork if
- You want the open-claude-cowork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and open-claude-cowork fits your workflow better
About Windmill
Windmill is an open source developer platform for internal code, including APIs, background jobs, workflows, and UIs. It lives in the self hostable low code automation ecosystem and supports Python, TypeScript, Go, Bash, SQL, GraphQL, PowerShell, Rust, and more. The project is positioned as an open source alternative to Zapier and, in the README, to Retool, Pipedream, Superblocks, and a simplified Temporal.
read the full Windmill overview →
About open-claude-cowork
Open Claude Cowork is an open source JavaScript desktop chat application in the Electron, Node.js, and Anthropic Claude ecosystem. It uses the Claude Agent SDK, Composio Tool Router, and MCP, and includes Secure Clawdbot for messaging platforms.
read the full open-claude-cowork overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Windmill or open-claude-cowork more popular?
Windmill has 17,982 GitHub stars and open-claude-cowork has 4,359. Windmill has the larger community by that measure.
Are Windmill and open-claude-cowork free?
Both are open source. Windmill has no licence declared in this registry, and open-claude-cowork is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Windmill and open-claude-cowork?
Windmill is written in Rust and open-claude-cowork in JavaScript. 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 open-claude-cowork?
Choose Windmill if you want the larger community (17,982 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose open-claude-cowork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.