head to head · open source
haystack vs Dagu
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Dagu has 4,036 stars, 339 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack leads on adoption by 558% (26,559 vs 4,036 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Dagu is written in Go under GPL-3.0. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Dagu 8%. Dagu 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 | Dagu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 339 |
| 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 Dagu if
- You want the Dagu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Dagu 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 Dagu
Dagu is local first workflow engine. It targets operations and internal automation. It lives in Infrastructure & Operations / Orchestration & Scheduling. It is Go project under GPL 3.0. It provides single binary with built in Web UI. It needs no external database or message broker. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows. GitHub metadata lists 3982 stars, 332 forks, 0 contributors, 67 open issues, repo age 0 years, last push 2026 09 14.
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or Dagu more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and Dagu has 4,036. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and Dagu free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Dagu under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and Dagu?
haystack is written in Python and Dagu 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 Dagu?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Dagu if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.