head to head · open source
haystack vs agent-swarm
haystack has 26,924 GitHub stars, 3,388 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agent-swarm has 992 stars, 145 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack leads on adoption by 2,614% (26,924 vs 992 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; agent-swarm is written in TypeScript under MIT. haystack has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, agent-swarm 15%. agent-swarm 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 | agent-swarm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 992 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 145 |
| 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-swarm if
- You want the agent-swarm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and agent-swarm fits your workflow better
About haystack
🎉🎊✨ Haystack 3.0 is out! ✨🎊🎉 Read the announcement here! 🥳 🎈 🎆 🪅 🎇 🍾 🥂 🎁 🌈 Haystack is an open source AI orchestration framework for building production ready LLM applications in Python. Design modular pipelines and agent workflows with explicit control over retrieval, routing, memory, and generation. Build scalable RAG systems, multimodal applications, semantic search, question answering, and autonomous agents, all in a transparent architecture that lets you experiment, customize deeply, and deploy with confidence. Table of Contents Installation Documentation Features Haystack Enterprise: Support &…
read the full haystack overview →
About agent-swarm
An engine to make your company AI Native Built by desplega.sh . [!TIP] This repo evolves every single day. Watch now → ▸ daily evolution · slack → pr · Making of agent swarm.dev is an open source operating system for AI work. A lead agent delegates goals to workers such as Claude Code or Codex. Isolated containers, shared memory, tools, schedules, and review gates preserve work across sessions. What you get A lead agent that receives work from Slack, repositories, issue trackers, email, or the API Schema validated task results for callers that need structured JSON output Deferred tasks that wake when all or any…
read the full agent-swarm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or agent-swarm more popular?
haystack has 26,924 GitHub stars and agent-swarm has 992. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and agent-swarm free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and agent-swarm under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and agent-swarm?
haystack is written in Python and agent-swarm in TypeScript. 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-swarm?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,924 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose agent-swarm if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.