Carbone vs Windward Core
Carbone
carbone.ioWindward Core
windwardstudios.comSide by side
| Figure | Carbone | Windward Core |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 18 | 1 |
| Spec score · Mail Merge Software | 9.4 (#1) | 7.8 (#19) |
| Integrations | Official connectors cover Airtable, Bubble, Glide, Make, n8n, Ninox, Retool, Zapier, HubSpot, Odoo, Pipedrive, Salesforce, DocuSign and Subnoto. | The maker lists connections including DB2, Microsoft Dynamics, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, Salesforce, SharePoint, and SQL Server, plus over 150 more sources. |
| Purpose | Carbone merges JSON data into document templates and generates files such as PDF, DOCX, XLSX and PPTX. | Windward Core embeds document generation into applications to create data-rich documents from templates and specified data. |
| Support | The Essential plan includes chat support from 9 AM to 6 PM UTC+2, with asynchronous email responses outside those hours. | The maker links to product support documentation and offers contact with its sales team for product questions and demos. |
Plans
Carbone
- Cloud FreeFree
- FreeFree
- On-Premise CommunityFree
- On-Premise FreeFree
- Amazon Web Services$0.15, paid once
- Cloud Essential$29 a month
- Essential€29 a month
- Cloud Essential Plus$95 a month
- Essential Plus€95 a month
- Advanced€159 a month
In their own words
Carbone
Carbone merges JSON data into document templates to generate files such as PDF, DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX. Templates can use formats including DOCX, ODT, ODS, XLSX, XML, Markdown, and HTML. Its conversion API handles more than 100 formats and supports LibreOffice, OnlyOffice, and Chromium. API access and bulk generation are listed, with Cloud, On-Premise, Private Cloud, and AWS deployment options. The pricing page lists free Cloud and On-Premise plans, plus a free 30-day trial for self-hosted On-Premise use. Cloud Essential costs $29.00 per month; documents are counted for each 1 MB of injected JSON and images, and additional documents beyond a plan allowance are invoiced separately. Carbone says Cloud stores templates for reuse but does not retain submitted JSON or generated documents beyond what rendering and delivery require. It says it has no access to customer templates, data, or generated documents in on-premise deployments. The service also offers an MCP server and an open-source Carbone Skill for connecting AI assistants and generating templates. Its listed platform options include API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows.
Windward Core
Windward Core is an embedded document-generation product combining a template Designer with an Engine. Users build templates in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint with tags and conditional logic, then generate data-rich documents from application data. A template can combine multiple sources, including SQL, JSON, XML, OData, and connections to 147 vendors. The Engine is available for Java, .NET, and REST, allowing calls from other programming languages. It supports outputs such as DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, PDF, HTML, direct printing, PostScript, bitmap, CSV, RTF, and TXT, plus batch personalization and API access. Engines can run on existing or dedicated servers; Docker and Kubernetes materials are provided for Manager. The Designer is a Windows Microsoft Office add-in and requires Microsoft Office for Windows. The Java RESTful Engine runs in Apache Tomcat environments, including Windows and Linux. Windward Core is now Fluent by Apryse. Pricing is available on request, with a free 30-day trial.