head to head
Zapier vs Windmill
Windmill is the open source alternative to Zapier — no-code workflow automation between apps. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — Windmill is a viable free replacement for Zapier. Windmill is open source under its own open-source terms, written in Rust, with 17,957 GitHub stars, 1,096 forks and 852 open issues; it was last pushed 5 hours ago. Zapier costs from $29, while self-hosting Windmill carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 3 other open source Zapier alternatives are tracked here, led by n8n at 204,887 stars. Windmill ranks #3 of 4 tracked open source Zapier alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: n8n (204,887 stars), ActivePieces (24,522 stars), Automatisch (13,970 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to Windmill and 3 reasons to stay on Zapier.
choose Windmill if
- Your Zapier bill is growing with seats or usage
- You need your data in a format and server you control
- Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
- You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort
stick with Zapier if
- You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
- Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
- You depend on a Zapier integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated
Side by side
| Windmill (open source) | Zapier | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | $29.99-$103.50/month |
| License | Custom / other | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — windmill-labs/windmill | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 18K · ⑂ 1.1K | — |
| Built with | Rust | — |
Why people look for a Zapier alternative
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 →
Other open source alternatives to Zapier
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is Windmill a good replacement for Zapier?
Windmill is an open source alternative to Zapier (No-code workflow automation between apps). It is written in Rust and licensed under its own terms, with 17,957 GitHub stars.
Is Windmill free compared to Zapier?
Yes. Windmill is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. Zapier is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.
How do I migrate from Zapier to Windmill?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check Windmill's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.