head to head · open source
haystack vs agent-orchestrator
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agent-orchestrator has 12,195 stars, 1,685 forks, 711 open issues and last shipped today. haystack leads on adoption by 118% (26,559 vs 12,195 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; agent-orchestrator is written in Go under Apache-2.0. haystack has attracted 12% 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.
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 | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| 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 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 agent-orchestrator
Agent Orchestrator is an open source desktop workspace for running and supervising teams of coding agents, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the agent orchestration ecosystem, alongside the coding harnesses it drives, and it is distributed as a local application rather than as a hosted service. The project describes itself as a place to plan, run, and supervise coding agents from one place, giving every coding task its own agent, workspace, and feedback loop.
read the full agent-orchestrator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or agent-orchestrator more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and agent-orchestrator has 12,195. 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 (26,559 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.