Nix vs WinGet
Nix
nixos.org
WinGet
learn.microsoft.comSide by side
| Figure | Nix | WinGet |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Package Managers | 8.6 (#16) | 7.3 (#79) |
| Spec score · App Installation | 8.4 (#5) | 6.9 (#17) |
| Dependency resolution | Yes | Yes |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Intended users | The documentation identifies developers, test engineers, DevOps engineers, system administrators, data scientists, students, and open source enthusiasts as likely users. | Microsoft describes WinGet use by developers to manage applications and by software publishers to distribute packages. |
| Package formats | Nix expressions,derivations,flakes | EXE,ZIP,INNO,NULLSOFT,MSI,WIX,APPX,MSIX,BURN,PORTABLE,FONT |
| Purpose | Nix is a tool for package management and system configuration that supports reproducible, declarative, and reliable systems. | WinGet is a command-line tool for discovering, installing, upgrading, removing, and configuring applications on Windows. |
| Security | The NixOS community has a security team and provides private vulnerability reporting and security information channels. | Submitted manifests are automatically validated for policy compliance and whether the package is known to be malicious, and may also receive manual review. |
| Supported platforms | The Nix reference manual lists Linux on i686, x86_64, and aarch64, and macOS on x86_64 and aarch64. | Windows 10 version 1809 or later,Windows 11,Windows Server 2025 |
Plans
In their own words
Nix
Nix is a free package management and system configuration tool for creating reproducible, declarative systems. It builds packages in isolation to avoid undeclared dependencies and help keep builds consistent across machines. Users can define and share development and build environments across projects and languages, install software from URLs or source code, and use virtual machines for integration testing. Nix supports dependency resolution, lockfiles, workspaces and offline installation; its package formats include Nix expressions, derivations and flakes. The Nix Packages collection offers over 140,000 packages. The wider ecosystem supports remote builds and deployments, binary caches, cross compilation, atomic upgrades and rollbacks to earlier package versions. Nix runs on Linux and macOS, and on Windows through WSL2; multi-user Windows installation requires WSL systemd support. Documentation includes guides for GitHub Actions, Docker images, Terraform deployment, SSH provisioning and distributed builds. Nix is aimed at people familiar with command-line interfaces and plain-text editors, including developers, test engineers, DevOps engineers, system administrators, data scientists, students and open-source enthusiasts. It has no paid plan listed.