head to head · open source
faiss vs dagster
faiss has 41,251 GitHub stars, 4,584 forks, 327 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. dagster has 16,364 stars, 2,395 forks, 2,589 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. faiss leads on adoption by 152% (41,251 vs 16,364 stars). faiss is written in C++ under MIT; dagster is written in Python under Apache-2.0. faiss has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, dagster 15%. faiss 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
| faiss | dagster | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.6K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick faiss if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dagster if
- You want the dagster feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dagster fits your workflow better
About faiss
Faiss Faiss is a library for efficient similarity search and clustering of dense vectors. It contains algorithms that search in sets of vectors of any size, up to ones that possibly do not fit in RAM. It also contains supporting code for evaluation and parameter tuning. Faiss is written in C++ with complete wrappers for Python/numpy. Some of the most useful algorithms are implemented on the GPU. It is developed primarily at Meta's Fundamental AI Research group. News See CHANGELOG.md for detailed information about latest features. Introduction Faiss contains several methods for similarity search. It assumes that…
read the full faiss overview →
About dagster
Dagster is a cloud native data pipeline orchestrator for the whole development lifecycle, with integrated lineage and observability, a declarative programming model, and best in class testability. It is designed for developing and maintaining data assets , such as tables, data sets, machine learning models, and reports. With Dagster, you declare—as Python functions—the data assets that you want to build. Dagster then helps you run your functions at the right time and keep your assets up to date. Here is an example of a graph of three assets defined in Python: The graph loaded into Dagster's web UI: Dagster is…
read the full dagster overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is faiss or dagster more popular?
faiss has 41,251 GitHub stars and dagster has 16,364. faiss has the larger community by that measure.
Are faiss and dagster free?
Both are open source. faiss is licensed under MIT and dagster under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between faiss and dagster?
faiss is written in C++ and dagster in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, faiss or dagster?
Choose faiss if you want the larger community (41,251 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dagster if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.