head to head · open source
Windmill vs MDMA
Windmill has 18,360 GitHub stars, 1,136 forks, 852 open issues and last shipped yesterday. MDMA has 73 stars, 2 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Windmill leads on adoption by 25,051% (18,360 vs 73 stars). Windmill is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; MDMA is written in TypeScript under MIT. Windmill has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, MDMA 3%. Windmill 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 | MDMA | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 73 |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 2 |
| 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 MDMA if
- You want the MDMA feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and MDMA 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 MDMA
MDMA Markdown Document with Mounted Applications Interactive documents from Markdown. Built for next gen apps 🌐 Website · 🚀 Live Demo · 📖 Docs · 💬 Discord · 🤗 Model Why MDMA? AI conversations today are plain text — the user reads a response and manually acts on it. MDMA changes that. When an LLM knows the MDMA spec, it can respond with interactive components (forms, tables, approval gates) instead of just text. The conversation becomes actionable: the user fills out a form, approves a step, or reviews structured data — all inline, with a predictable schema that your app already knows how to render and…
More in Productivity & Utilities
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Frequently asked questions
Is Windmill or MDMA more popular?
Windmill has 18,360 GitHub stars and MDMA has 73. Windmill has the larger community by that measure.
Are Windmill and MDMA free?
Both are open source. Windmill has no licence declared in this registry, and MDMA is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Windmill and MDMA?
Windmill is written in Rust and MDMA 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 MDMA?
Choose Windmill if you want the larger community (18,360 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose MDMA if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.