Tekton logo
vs
Windmill logo

Tekton vs Windmill

A side-by-side comparison of Tekton and Windmill across 26 workflow orchestration capabilities. Tekton fully supports 15 of them and Windmill fully supports 21; of the 12 mandatory features, Tekton covers 11 and Windmill covers 11.

Tekton

Tekton is an open-source, Kubernetes-native framework for building CI/CD systems, defining Tasks and Pipelines as Kubernetes custom resources that run each step in a container.

Features fully supported15 / 26
Mandatory features: 11 / 12View profile

Windmill

Windmill is an open-source developer platform and workflow engine that turns scripts in Python, TypeScript, Go, Bash, SQL and more into workflows, scheduled jobs, webhooks and internal apps.

Features fully supported21 / 26
Mandatory features: 11 / 12View profile

Feature comparison

7 of 26 capabilities differ between Tekton and Windmill.

Change tools
CapabilityTektonWindmill
DAG-based workflow definition
Define dependencies and execution order
Mandatory
YesYes
Code-first workflows
Versionable, testable workflows
Mandatory
YesYes
Declarative workflow model
Predictability, reproducibility
Mandatory
YesYes
Task dependency resolution
Correct execution order
Mandatory
YesYes
Persistent workflow state
Crash recovery, observability
Mandatory
YesYes
Task retries
Handle transient failures
Mandatory
YesYes
Retry policies (backoff, limits)
Avoid cascading failures
Recommended
PartialYes
Scheduling (cron / time-based)
Automated recurring workflows
Depends
PartialYes
Event-driven execution
React to external systems
Depends
YesYes
Backfills / replays
Reprocess historical data
Depends
NoNo
Idempotency support
Safe retries & replays
Mandatory
PartialPartial
Exactly-once semantics
Correctness for business workflows
Optional
NoNo
Long-running workflows (days/months)
Business processes, approvals
Depends
NoYes
Human-in-the-loop steps
Approvals, manual actions
Optional
PartialYes
Dynamic workflows at runtime
Conditional execution
Depends
PartialYes
Workflow versioning
Safe evolution over time
Recommended
YesYes
Distributed execution
Scalability
Mandatory
YesYes
High availability scheduler
Production reliability
Recommended
YesYes
Fault-tolerant execution
Crash safety
Mandatory
YesYes
Observability (logs, states, UI)
Debugging & ops
Mandatory
YesYes
Workflow-level visibility
Understand end-to-end runs
Mandatory
YesYes
Task isolation
Failure containment
Mandatory
YesYes
Native Kubernetes support
Modern infra compatibility
Depends
YesYes
Multi-language SDKs
Polyglot systems
Optional
NoYes
Deterministic replay
Safe recovery & correctness
Optional
NoNo
Pluggable execution backends
Flexibility
Recommended
NoPartial

* To be considered a complete workflow orchestration tool, a tool must implement the features marked as mandatory according to our assessment.

Spotted an inaccuracy? contact@workflows.guru

Learn more

Read the full profiles, including pros and cons, installation and alternatives.