head to head · open source
Windmill vs ai-devkit
Windmill has 18,360 GitHub stars, 1,136 forks, 852 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ai-devkit has 1,656 stars, 262 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Windmill leads on adoption by 1,009% (18,360 vs 1,656 stars). Windmill is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; ai-devkit is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Windmill has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, ai-devkit 16%. ai-devkit was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | ai-devkit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 262 |
| 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 ai-devkit if
- You want the ai-devkit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and ai-devkit 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 ai-devkit
AI DevKit English 中文 The control plane for AI coding agents. AI DevKit gives Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, opencode, Pi, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Devin, and other coding agents one local first operating layer: one config, one console, local memory retrieval, cross agent communication, and composable engineering skills led by dev lifecycle . One config for every agent — .ai devkit.json reconciles setup across the coding tools your team uses One console for running sessions — agent console is a live TUI dashboard for supervising local agents across providers Cross agent communication — agent send lets you…
read the full ai-devkit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Windmill or ai-devkit more popular?
Windmill has 18,360 GitHub stars and ai-devkit has 1,656. Windmill has the larger community by that measure.
Are Windmill and ai-devkit free?
Both are open source. Windmill has no licence declared in this registry, and ai-devkit is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Windmill and ai-devkit?
Windmill is written in Rust and ai-devkit in TypeScript. 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 ai-devkit?
Choose Windmill if you want the larger community (18,360 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose ai-devkit if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.