head to head · open source
haystack vs dtm
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. dtm has 10,919 stars, 997 forks, 87 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. haystack leads on adoption by 143% (26,559 vs 10,919 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; dtm is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, dtm 9%. haystack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | dtm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-01-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 997 |
| 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 dtm if
- You want the dtm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dtm 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 dtm
DTM is a distributed transaction framework that provides cross service eventual data consistency for microservices, with saga, TCC, XA, 2 phase message, outbox, and workflow patterns plus SDKs for Go, Java, PHP, C , Python, and Node.js.
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or dtm more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and dtm has 10,919. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and dtm free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dtm under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and dtm?
haystack is written in Python and dtm 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 dtm?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dtm if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.