Inngest vs Windmill
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted automation & workflows options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Windmill
Developer platform for scripts, flows and apps
| Feature | Inngest | Windmill |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 90 · Excellent | 95 · Excellent |
| Category | Automation & Workflows | Automation & Workflows |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, kubernetes |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,879 | ★ 18,022 |
| First released | 2021 | 2022 |
| Replaces | Zapier, AWS Step Functions | Zapier, Retool |
What are Inngest and Windmill?
Inngest
Inngest is an open-source platform for building event-driven workflows and reliable background jobs. It provides durable step functions, automatic retries and a local development server, and the execution engine can be self-hosted.
- Event-driven background jobs
- Durable step functions
- Local development server
- Self-hostable execution engine
Windmill
Windmill is a developer platform that turns scripts into workflows, APIs, and internal apps with scheduling and approvals. It targets engineers automating internal tooling. It is deployed via Docker with PostgreSQL.
- Scripts in Python, TypeScript and more
- Auto-generated UIs for scripts
- Flows with branching and retries
- Fast Rust execution engine
Inngest vs Windmill: key differences
Inngest is written in Go, while Windmill is built with Rust. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Inngest versus AGPL-3.0 for Windmill. Inngest is the lighter option, starting around 512 MB of RAM against 1,024 MB for Windmill. Windmill has the considerably larger community, at 18,022 GitHub stars versus 5,879.
Why pick each one
Choose Inngest if…
- Good developer experience
- Reliable step execution
Watch out for
- Some features tied to Inngest Cloud
Choose Windmill if…
- Great for developer automation
- Fast and scalable
- Code-first approach
Watch out for
- More technical than no-code tools
- Requires Postgres
Frequently asked questions
Is Inngest or Windmill better?
Neither is universally better. Windmill has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Inngest and Windmill free and open-source?
Yes. Inngest is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Windmill under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Inngest and Windmill with Docker?
Inngest: yes. Windmill: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Inngest or Windmill?
Inngest has the smaller minimum footprint at 512 MB of RAM, compared to about 1,024 MB for Windmill. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.