Astronomer vs Windmill (2026): which should you pick?

Pick Astronomer if

• Fits if you already write Airflow DAGs and don't want to run the servers
• Works for teams that want a trial with no card before committing

Look elsewhere if

• Pricey if you leave a deployment running all month, at $0.35 an hour before workers
• Skip it if you want a fixed monthly price, because workers, clusters and add-ons bill separately
• Tight if you're staying free, as there's only a 14-day trial
• Watch out: Business and above show a quote only, and cloud networking costs are passed through

Pick Windmill if

• Fits if your automations are a pile of cron jobs and stray scripts that need one home
• Works for engineering teams who want every change reviewed as a diff before it goes live

Look elsewhere if

• Skip it if nobody on the team writes code, because most steps are written in a programming language
• Tight if you're on Cloud Free, where each extra second of compute counts as another of your 1,000 executions
• Tight if you self-host for free, as Community stops at 3 workspaces and 50 users and keeps run details for 30 days
• Pricey if you self-host and need audit logs or SAML, as that's Enterprise from $120 a month
• Watch out: there's no connector library, and paid self-hosted instances report seat and memory use to Windmill

Astronomer

• Deployments, workers, dedicated clusters, Observe and Otto are each billed separately, so the monthly total depends on usage.
• Prices shown are the monthly-billing view; Business and above show only a quote on the annual view.
• Networking costs are passed through from the cloud provider.
• Astro Private Cloud has no published price.

Windmill

• Windmill is code-first: scripts and most flow steps are written in a programming language, so it suits engineers more than non-technical users.
• The free self-hosted edition stops at 3 workspaces, 50 users and 10 SSO users, has no audit logs and keeps run details for up to 30 days.
• Cloud Free covers 1,000 executions a month, and an execution is one job of under a second; each extra second of compute counts as another.
• Enterprise and Pro bill at least 2 compute units, and their instances report seat and memory use to Windmill through license telemetry.

Astronomer

Managed Airflow deployments

Each deployment includes the scheduler, webserver and triggerer, sized to the Dag volume and billed at a fixed hourly rate by size.

Workers that scale to zero

Workers run individual Airflow tasks in seven sizes (A5 to A160) from $0.13 an hour and scale down when idle.

Astro Observe

Cost and performance metrics, root-cause analysis and lineage for Airflow pipelines, priced as a percentage of compute costs.

Otto data engineering agent

An agent for Airflow and Astro work, charged with an intelligence fee from $1.25 per million tokens plus model provider costs.

Dedicated clusters and networking

Standard multi-tenant clusters are included at no cost; dedicated single-tenant clusters start at $2.40 an hour.

Private Cloud option

Astro Private Cloud runs Airflow in your own environment, with multi-cluster management and air-gapped deployment support.

Windmill

Scripts in more than 20 languages

A function in TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, Bash, SQL, PHP or another supported language becomes an API endpoint and a form. Imports are resolved and versions locked at each deploy.

Workflows as a graph or as code

Flows are drawn in a flow editor or written in Python or TypeScript and called as an API endpoint. Retries, approval steps and parallel branches are built in.

Internal apps

An app is a React or Svelte frontend whose backend is your existing scripts and workflows. It can be shared with teams, published publicly or embedded in another product.

AI agents and AI-assisted building

Agents run on any of 12 model providers or your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint, with scripts and MCP servers as their tools. Scripts and flows can also be generated with AI in the UI.

Forks, review and rollback

Changes are made in a fork of the workspace, reviewed as a diff, then deployed to staging and production. Each deployment keeps its version, so an earlier one can be redeployed.

Run history and observability

Every run keeps its inputs, logs and result, and a failure can alert a team on Slack, Teams or by email. Enterprise adds audit logs, queue metrics and OpenTelemetry tracing.

Astronomer

• Developer$0.35

  per hour per deployment, billed monthly

  For building and testing pipelines: scale-to-zero compute, hibernating deployments, API access and rollbacks.

• Team$0.42

  per hour per deployment, billed monthly

  Adds observability and data quality, dedicated clusters, high availability, 7-day audit logs and 24x5 support.

• BusinessCustom

  Annual quote. Adds SSO enforcement, CI/CD enforcement, 90-day audit logs and 24x7 support with a 1-hour SLA.

• EnterpriseCustom

  Annual quote. Adds remote execution agents, custom RBAC, SCIM, IP access lists and organization dashboards.

• Enterprise Business CriticalCustom

  Annual quote. Adds cross-region disaster recovery and 24x7 support with a 30-minute SLA.

Windmill

• Free and Open-source$0

  Self-hosted Community Edition with unlimited executions, capped at 3 workspaces, 50 users, 4 groups and 10 SSO users. Community support on Discord.

• Free (Cloud)$0

  Windmill Cloud with 1,000 executions a month, sign-in with Google, GitHub or GitLab, and community support on Discord. No credit card required.

• Team (Cloud)$10

  per seat / month, billed by usage each month

  Set per workspace. A seat covers one developer or two operators and includes 10,000 executions a month. 10 seats at most, with audit logs kept for 7 days.

• Pro (self-hosted)From $48

  per month: $8 per seat plus compute units

  For individuals, seed-stage startups and companies under 10 employees and $250k in revenue. Capped at 10 compute units and 10 SSO users, with no audit logs.

• Enterprise (self-hosted)From $120

  per month: $20 per builder seat, $50 per compute unit

  Audit logs, SAML and SCIM, Git sync, autoscaling, a commercial license and 24/7 priority support with a 3-hour response time. Non-builders count as half a seat.

• Enterprise (Cloud)From $840

  per month: $40 per developer seat plus compute

  A dedicated Windmill Cloud instance with isolated workers and database, unlimited audit log retention and 24/7 priority support.

Astronomer

No public discounts listed.

Windmill

• Annual discount

  16% off Enterprise and Pro with annual billing

  With the Annually option selected, the pricing page applies a 16% annual discount to Enterprise and Pro subscriptions, which comes to 10 months' price for the year.

• Nonprofit

  40% off Enterprise for nonprofits

  Windmill gives non-profits the regular Enterprise plan at a 40% discount: $12 per developer seat a month instead of $20 when self-hosted.

• Education

  40% off Enterprise for universities

  Universities get the same 40% discount on the regular Enterprise plan that Windmill gives non-profits.

• Startups

  Pro plan for seed-stage startups

  The self-hosted Pro plan, at $8 per seat against $20 on Enterprise, is open to individuals, seed-stage startups and businesses with fewer than 10 employees and $250k in revenue.