head to head · open source
haystack vs dbos-transact-py
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dbos-transact-py has 1,579 stars, 95 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack leads on adoption by 1,582% (26,559 vs 1,579 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; dbos-transact-py is written in Python under MIT. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, dbos-transact-py 6%. 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 | dbos-transact-py | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 95 |
| 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 dbos-transact-py if
- You want the dbos-transact-py feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dbos-transact-py 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 dbos-transact-py
DBOS Transact is an open source Python library for durable workflows backed by Postgres. It lives in the Python infrastructure and operations ecosystem, under orchestration and scheduling, and is distributed as the dbos package on PyPI under the MIT license. The project lets developers annotate ordinary functions as workflows and steps, then checkpoint state in Postgres so interrupted programs resume from completed work instead of starting over.
read the full dbos-transact-py overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or dbos-transact-py more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and dbos-transact-py has 1,579. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and dbos-transact-py free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dbos-transact-py under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and dbos-transact-py?
haystack is written in Python and dbos-transact-py 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, haystack or dbos-transact-py?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dbos-transact-py if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.