head to head · open source
haystack vs agent-orchestrator
haystack has 26,924 GitHub stars, 3,388 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agent-orchestrator has 14,059 stars, 1,912 forks, 711 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack leads on adoption by 92% (26,924 vs 14,059 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; agent-orchestrator is written in Go under Apache-2.0. haystack has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, agent-orchestrator 14%. agent-orchestrator was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| haystack | agent-orchestrator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick haystack if
- You weight community size — 27K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agent-orchestrator if
- You want the agent-orchestrator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and agent-orchestrator fits your workflow better
About haystack
🎉🎊✨ Haystack 3.0 is out! ✨🎊🎉 Read the announcement here! 🥳 🎈 🎆 🪅 🎇 🍾 🥂 🎁 🌈 Haystack is an open source AI orchestration framework for building production ready LLM applications in Python. Design modular pipelines and agent workflows with explicit control over retrieval, routing, memory, and generation. Build scalable RAG systems, multimodal applications, semantic search, question answering, and autonomous agents, all in a transparent architecture that lets you experiment, customize deeply, and deploy with confidence. Table of Contents Installation Documentation Features Haystack Enterprise: Support &…
read the full haystack overview →
About agent-orchestrator
Agent Orchestrator Plan, run, and supervise coding agents from one place. Give every coding task its own agent, workspace, and feedback loop. Plan and delegate larger outcomes with a project aware orchestrator. Follow every worker, pull request, CI run, and review in a live Kanban. Download AO • Documentation • Releases • Contributing • Discord English · 简体中文 · 日本語 · 한국어 · Español · Français · Deutsch · Português (Brasil) A workspace for agent driven development One coding agent can handle a task. Running several across a project creates a different job: deciding what matters, splitting work…
read the full agent-orchestrator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or agent-orchestrator more popular?
haystack has 26,924 GitHub stars and agent-orchestrator has 14,059. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and agent-orchestrator free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and agent-orchestrator under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and agent-orchestrator?
haystack is written in Python and agent-orchestrator in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, haystack or agent-orchestrator?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,924 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose agent-orchestrator if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.