Is Soketi or Windmill better?

Neither clearly leads. Soketi starts at Free and Windmill at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Soketi or Windmill?

Soketi starts at Free and Windmill at Free.

Does Soketi or Windmill run on more platforms?

Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. Windmill runs on web, api, linux, windows, mac.

Can I use Soketi for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Soketi best used for?

Soketi is most often used for a laravel application that already uses echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime provider, realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasons, a local or ci environment that needs a pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid account, a high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure bill. Of those, a laravel application that already uses echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime provider and realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasons are not what Windmill is typically brought in for.

What can Soketi do that Windmill cannot?

Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends. Windmill covers Script-to-workflow engine, Auto-generated UIs, Self-hosted deployment, Git sync.

Developer Tools · head to head

Soketi vs Windmill

Soketi

Developer Tools

Self-hosted, Pusher-compatible WebSockets server with a stalled maintenance record

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Windmill

Automation Integration

Open-source developer platform for building scripts, workflows, and internal apps

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Soketi maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.; Windmill free self-hosted tier caps SSO users at 10 and workspaces at 3, requiring Enterprise for larger teams.
They diverge on capability: Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Windmill covers Script-to-workflow engine.
Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Soketi and Windmill actually diverge.

Attributes where Soketi and Windmill differ
Attribute	Soketi	Windmill
Pricing model	Open source, no licence fee	open-source
Platforms	Linux, macOS, Windows	web, api, linux, windows, mac
Category	Developer Tools	Automation Integration

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Soketi

Pusher protocol compatibility
Presence and private channels
Horizontal scaling
App management backends
Webhooks
Prometheus metrics

Only in Windmill

Script-to-workflow engine
Auto-generated UIs
Self-hosted deployment
Git sync
SSO support
Audit logs

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Soketi

A Laravel application that already uses Echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime providernot Windmill
Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Windmill
A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Windmill
A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Windmill

Windmill

Turning ad-hoc scripts into scheduled jobs and APIsnot Soketi
Building internal tools from existing Python/TypeScript codenot Soketi
Self-hosted automation for engineering teamsnot Soketi
Orchestrating multi-language workflowsnot Soketi

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Soketi

Maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
Dependency drift on Node and uWebSockets.js will eventually force you to fork or migrate, and that cost is unbudgeted at the point you adopt it.
There is no commercial support to buy, so a production incident at three in the morning is entirely your problem with no escalation path.
Scaling beyond a single node needs Redis and careful configuration, and getting presence channels correct across nodes is a genuine source of subtle bugs.
It implements the Pusher protocol rather than tracking it, so any protocol feature Pusher adds later will not appear, and the compatibility guarantee slowly decays.

Windmill

Free self-hosted tier caps SSO users at 10 and workspaces at 3, requiring Enterprise for larger teams.
Compute unit and seat-based pricing (developer vs. operator seats, worker compute units) adds pricing complexity beyond a flat monthly fee.
Email triggers are capped at 100/day on the free tier, limiting event-driven use cases without upgrading.
Smaller ecosystem of pre-built integrations compared to more established automation tools like n8n.

Pricing, plan by plan

Soketi

Free

SoketiFree
- MIT licensed
- Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
- No vendor billing

Windmill

Free

Free / Open-sourceFree
- Unlimited executions
- Self-hosted deployment
- Max 10 users with SSO
Enterprise$120/month
- Unlimited executions and workspaces
- Uncapped SSO seats
- 24/7 priority support (3-hour response)

Which should you pick?

Choose Soketi if

You need pusher protocol compatibility.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
You also want presence and private channels.

Soketi review

Choose Windmill if

You need script-to-workflow engine.
You want to start without paying.
You work on web, api, linux, windows, mac.
You also want auto-generated uis.

Windmill review

Questions people ask

Is Soketi or Windmill better?: Neither clearly leads. Soketi starts at Free and Windmill at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Soketi or Windmill?: Soketi starts at Free and Windmill at Free.
Does Soketi or Windmill run on more platforms?: Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. Windmill runs on web, api, linux, windows, mac.
Can I use Soketi for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Soketi best used for?: Soketi is most often used for a laravel application that already uses echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime provider, realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasons, a local or ci environment that needs a pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid account, a high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure bill. Of those, a laravel application that already uses echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime provider and realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasons are not what Windmill is typically brought in for.
What can Soketi do that Windmill cannot?: Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends. Windmill covers Script-to-workflow engine, Auto-generated UIs, Self-hosted deployment, Git sync.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Soketi: Is Soketi still maintained?

Barely. The maintainer has stated that available time is very limited and releases have been sparse; treat it as community-maintained.

Windmill: What does Windmill cost?

Windmill's Free and Open-source edition is $0/month for self-hosted use with unlimited executions, while Enterprise starts at $120/month with unlimited workspaces and uncapped SSO seats, priced further by developer/operator seats and compute units.

Source

Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?

No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.

Windmill: Is there a free plan and what are its limits?

The free self-hosted plan supports unlimited executions but caps SSO at 10 users, workspaces at 3, groups/permissions at 4, and email triggers at 100 per day.

Source

Soketi: What does it cost?

Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.

Windmill: How is usage metered on Windmill Enterprise?

Enterprise usage is metered through seats (developer seats at $20/month, operator seats at $10/month) and compute units, e.g. $100/month for 2 standard-worker compute units.

Source

Soketi: What are people moving to?

Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.

Windmill: What happens to a self-hosted Windmill deployment if the company shuts down?

The pricing page addresses this directly as an FAQ topic, noting that self-hosted applications built on the open-source edition can continue running independently of Windmill the company.

Source

Soketi vs Windmill

Soketi

Windmill

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Soketi

Only in Windmill

What people use each for

Soketi

Windmill

Where each one falls short

Soketi

Windmill

Pricing, plan by plan

Soketi

Windmill

Which should you pick?

Choose Soketi if

Choose Windmill if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Soketi

More on Windmill

Keep looking

Other head to heads