head to head · open source
haystack vs astron-agent
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. astron-agent has 9,017 stars, 887 forks, 46 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. haystack leads on adoption by 195% (26,559 vs 9,017 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; astron-agent is written in Java under Apache-2.0. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, astron-agent 10%. haystack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (agentic-ai, ai), 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 | astron-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 887 |
| 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 astron-agent if
- You want the astron-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and astron-agent fits your workflow better
About haystack
Haystack is an open source AI orchestration framework written in Python under the Apache 2.0 licence, for building context engineered, production ready large language model applications as modular pipelines and agent workflows with explicit control over retrieval, routing, memory, and generation, and it is aimed at developers and teams building scalable agents, retrieval augmented generation, multimodal applications, semantic search, question answering, and conversational systems.
read the full haystack overview →
About astron-agent
Astron Agent is an enterprise grade, commercial friendly agentic workflow platform for building next generation SuperAgents, aimed at organizations that need to orchestrate AI workflows, models, tools, and RPA automation in production rather than in a demo.
read the full astron-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or astron-agent more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and astron-agent has 9,017. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and astron-agent free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and astron-agent under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and astron-agent?
haystack is written in Python and astron-agent in Java. 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 astron-agent?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose astron-agent if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.