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FastYoke vs Windmill
Windmill turns scripts into workflows and internal UIs — code-first orchestration you self-host. FastYoke is a declarative multi-tenant app platform with an FSM state model, RBAC, and audit. Both are self-hostable and fast — different mental models.
What Windmill is good for
- Scripts as first-class citizens. If your team thinks in Python, TypeScript, Go, or Bash, Windmill turns those scripts into scheduled jobs, flows, and internal UIs with very little ceremony. Code-first to the core.
- Open source and fast. An AGPL-3.0 core written in Rust, free to self-host via Docker. You own the deployment and can read the engine.
- Imperative flexibility. Flows are DAGs of arbitrary script steps with retries and branching — when your logic is genuinely procedural, that flexibility is exactly right.
What FastYoke is good for
- A declarative state model, not a script graph. FastYoke's primitive is a strict finite state machine — named states, guarded transitions, self-loops, an admin override — that you can render, diff, and reason about. Windmill's flows are imperative DAGs; FastYoke's workflows are state machines with formal properties.
- Multi-tenant by architecture. Every tenant gets its own database file, isolated at the OS layer. Windmill separates teams by workspace inside shared infrastructure; FastYoke's boundary is the storage engine itself.
- Governance on every tier. A granular RBAC catalog with custom roles, a role-change audit log, and an append-only event ledger ship in the base product — where Windmill gates audit logs and enterprise SSO behind the paid edition.
Head-to-head
Eight dimensions that distinguish the two products. Verdicts are one sentence each — read the rows, judge for yourself.
When to choose which
Choose Windmill when…
- your logic is genuinely procedural and lives in scripts
- a code-first DAG of steps fits how your team works
- an AGPL-3.0 engine you can read and fork matters
- you want to orchestrate jobs across many languages
- workspace-level separation is enough isolation for you
Choose FastYoke when…
- your business logic is a lifecycle — states and transitions
- you want a workflow you can render and verify, not just run
- you're shipping a multi-tenant platform with mechanical isolation
- RBAC and audit have to be present on every tier
- you need the same engine from local dev to an air-gapped deployment
| Dimension | Windmill | FastYoke |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Developer platform that turns scripts (Python, TypeScript, Go, SQL, Bash) into workflows, schedules, and internal UIs — code-first orchestration. | Declarative multi-tenant application platform — an FSM state model with entities, RBAC, and audit, not a script orchestrator. |
| Local runtime / dev loop | Self-host locally via Docker Compose; a CLI syncs scripts and flows to your instance. | `npx fastyoke init` runs the light engine with no Docker — FSM, entities, forms, realtime, and the append-only log on a local SQLite file. Same wire contract as production. |
| Self-host & deployment | Self-host the open-source edition via Docker; the enterprise edition adds autoscaling, dedicated and agent workers, and a staging-to-prod deployment UI. | A single Rust binary — air-gapped On-Prem with literally no outbound, or a managed multi-node cloud. The same engine and contract across all three. |
| Multi-tenancy | Workspaces separate teams inside one instance (the free edition caps workspaces and users); isolation is logical within shared infrastructure. | Each tenant gets its own database file, isolated at the operating-system layer — mechanical isolation rather than shared-instance scoping. |
| Permissions / RBAC | Roles and workspace-level access controls; SSO, SAML, SCIM, and finer-grained governance are enterprise-gated. | A granular permission catalog with system and custom roles and an append-only role-change audit ledger — shipped on every tier. |
| Audit | Audit logs are an enterprise-edition feature. | An append-only event ledger on every tier, plus ed25519 sealed-PDF evidence any auditor can verify at a public endpoint. |
| Workflow primitive | Flows are DAGs of script steps — imperative code with retries and branches. Powerful and flexible, and as verifiable as the code inside each step. | A strict FSM — named states and guarded transitions you can render, diff, and reason about — with self-loops and an admin override, every firing recorded. |
| Pricing / license | Open-source edition is AGPL-3.0 and free to self-host (free-edition caps ~50 users / 3 workspaces); Enterprise from $120/mo self-hosted, plus per-seat ($20 developer / $10 operator) and per-worker compute. Per windmill.dev/pricing, August 2026. | Every app is free; you pay for the platform above a hard-capped free tier — metered by transitions, storage, and egress with a spend cap you set. Enterprise Platform covers air-gap and custom needs. Per fastyoke.io/pricing, August 2026. |