head to head · open source
Windmill vs superplane
Windmill has 17,982 GitHub stars, 1,097 forks, 852 open issues and last shipped today. superplane has 7,510 stars, 639 forks, 617 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Windmill leads on adoption by 139% (17,982 vs 7,510 stars). Windmill is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; superplane is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Windmill has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, superplane 9%. 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 | superplane | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 639 |
| 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 superplane if
- You want the superplane feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and superplane 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 superplane
SuperPlane is an open source control plane for automating routine software engineering work, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 and written primarily in Go. It describes itself as an "open source factory for one shot engineering," and it lives in the DevOps, platform engineering and workflow automation ecosystem. The project is currently in beta, with its source, releases and issue tracker hosted on GitHub.
read the full superplane overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Windmill or superplane more popular?
Windmill has 17,982 GitHub stars and superplane has 7,510. Windmill has the larger community by that measure.
Are Windmill and superplane free?
Both are open source. Windmill has no licence declared in this registry, and superplane is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Windmill and superplane?
Windmill is written in Rust and superplane in Go. 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 superplane?
Choose Windmill if you want the larger community (17,982 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose superplane if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.