Windmill · Workflow automation
Self-hosting Windmill for 1 person: the cost
At 1 user, Windmill needs 2.5 GB of memory and 15.1 GB of disk. That fits the Basic 4 GiB at DigitalOcean for $24.00 a month. Add backups and the time it takes to look after and the real figure is $141 a month.
- Server
- $24.00Basic 4 GiB, 2 vCPU
- Backups
- $4.80provider snapshots
- Your time
- $1121.5 h a month at $75
- All in
- $141per month
- First-time setup
- $450about 6 hours, once
How 2.5 GB was arrived at
2 GB covers the stack at rest, every container the project ships included. 1 user at 10 MB each adds 0.0 GB, giving 2.0 GB. Adding 25% headroom so the machine is not run at its ceiling gives 2.5 GB, and the smallest plan at or above that is the Basic 4 GiB with 4 GB.
Disk works the same way: 15 GB to begin with, plus 0.1 GB per user, so 15.1 GB against the 80 GB the plan includes.
Rust server with PostgreSQL and one or more workers. Faster per job than the Node-based options, which matters if the workflow count is high.
Over three years
| Period | Server and backups | Your time | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup, once | — | $450 | $450 |
| Per month | $28.80 | $112 | $141 |
| First year | $346 | $1,800 | $2,146 |
| 36 months | $1,037 | $4,500 | $5,537 |
If you do not price your own time, the 36-month figure is $1,037 instead. Both numbers are real; which one applies depends on whether the hours would otherwise have been billable.
What you would be paying instead at this size
| Commercial product | Tier | Per month | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zapier | Professional | $29.99 | -$111 | breakdown |
A positive difference means self-hosting is cheaper at this size, with your time already counted.
Where to put Windmill
2.5 GB of memory and 15.1 GB of disk is what this needs at solo. The cheapest plan that fits, among the providers whose prices we have read ourselves, is the Basic 4 GiB at DigitalOcean for $24.00 a month.
Go to DigitalOcean Compare hosts
We are not claiming this is the cheapest server on the internet. It is the cheapest one we can honestly quote. Hetzner Cloud, Vultr and PikaPods publish prices we could not read programmatically, and Hetzner in particular is usually cheaper per gigabyte of memory than anything quoted above. Price them yourself before you commit.
The DigitalOcean link above is a referral link: if you sign up through it and pay your first $25, we receive $25 of DigitalOcean account credit. That never changes the computed costs, which server is chosen, or the conclusion of this page. The sizing model and every price source are published in full.