head to head · open source
haystack vs Dagu
haystack has 26,913 GitHub stars, 3,384 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Dagu has 4,536 stars, 392 forks, 67 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack leads on adoption by 493% (26,913 vs 4,536 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Dagu is written in Go under GPL-3.0. haystack has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Dagu 9%. haystack 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 | ★ 4.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 392 |
| 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 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 Dagu
Docs · CLI · API · Examples · Live demo (username/password: demouser) · Discord Dagu Dagu is a local first workflow engine for operations and internal automation. It is open source and self hostable: a single binary with a built in Web UI, no external database or message broker, running on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Define DAGs in a declarative YAML format. It natively supports shell commands, Docker containers, Kubernetes Jobs, remote commands via SSH, and more through Dagu Actions. Dagu turns existing scripts and runbooks into production workflows with scheduling, retries, human tasks, and run history. It runs…
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or Dagu more popular?
haystack has 26,913 GitHub stars and Dagu has 4,536. 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 (26,913 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.