Argo Workflows vs Windmill
Argo Workflows
argoproj.github.io
Windmill
windmill.devSide by side
| Figure | Argo Workflows | Windmill |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $120/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · IT Orchestration Software | 8.7 (#3) | 8.6 (#4) |
| Spec score · Workload Automation Software | 8.6 (#5) | 8.6 (#7) |
| Spec score · Workflow Orchestration Software | 8.6 (#9) | 8.6 (#11) |
| Integrations | The project lists Argo Events, Hera, Katib, Kedro, Kubeflow Pipelines, Netflix Metaflow, Piper, Seldon, and SQLFlow among projects that use or rely on Argo Workflows. | Windmill Hub lists more than 200 resource types, including Google services, GitHub, GitLab, Slack, Microsoft Teams, AWS, S3, BigQuery, ClickHouse, Datadog and Discord. |
| Security controls | The security guidance recommends enabling transport-layer security and an authentication mode for Argo Server, then configuring its role and role binding with appropriate permissions. | The platform documents PID namespaces, optional NSJAIL sandboxing, agent workers and worker groups for process isolation. |
| Security limitation | The documentation says Argo Workflows can create arbitrary pods, and—with the workflow-restrictions feature as an exception—does not attempt to restrict or prevent this. | Job isolation is disabled by default, so administrators must manually enable PID namespace isolation or NSJAIL for production protection. |
| Support | The project directs users with questions to GitHub Discussions and Slack and describes monthly community meetings. | The free self-hosted plan includes community support on Discord, while Enterprise lists 24/7 priority support with a 3-hour response time. |
Plans
Windmill
- Free and Open-sourceFree
- Free and Open-sourceFree
- Enterprise$120 a month
- Enterprise example configuration$170 a month
In their own words
Argo Workflows
Argo Workflows is a free, open-source engine for orchestrating container-based jobs on Kubernetes. Workflows can be arranged as sequential steps or as tasks linked in a directed acyclic graph, with each step running in a container. The project lists machine learning pipelines, data and batch processing, infrastructure automation, and CI/CD as use cases. Controls include loops, conditionals, retries, timeouts, suspension and resumption, cancellation, and limits on parallel work. Cron scheduling, workflow archiving, a UI for viewing and managing runs, and Prometheus metrics are included. Artifact support covers S3, Artifactory, Alibaba Cloud OSS, Azure Blob Storage, HTTP, Git, GCS, raw artifacts, and plugins. The server provides REST API support over HTTP and gRPC, with client libraries for Java, Go, Python, and TypeScript. Argo Workflows is self-hosted and can run on any Kubernetes cluster. Its listed plan costs nothing, and the official pages list no paid plans or usage limits. Administrators should configure transport security, authentication, roles, and permissions; workflow pods run as root by default unless their security context is set.
Windmill
Windmill is an open-source workflow engine and developer platform for building endpoints, workflows and user interfaces. It is aimed at teams making internal software across engineering, data, sales, support and marketing. Scripts can be written in TypeScript, Python, Go, PHP, Bash, C#, SQL, Rust, Ruby and R, among other languages. Windmill combines a script editor, low-code flow builder, and low-code, React or Svelte app builders. Scripts and flows can be triggered by webhooks, schedules, HTTP routes, queues or an open API. Its Hub lists more than 200 resource types, including GitHub, Slack, AWS, BigQuery and PostgreSQL; users can also define custom resource types with schemas. Local development through the CLI and Git sync support version control and deployment workflows. Self-hosting is supported. The free and open-source plan is free and includes three workspaces, 50 users, 10 GiB of workspace object storage and 100 guest app users per 30 days. Enterprise is $120 a month and includes a month-long trial. Enterprise features include granular permissions, RBAC, secret management, OAuth, SSO and audit logs.