head to head · open source
haystack vs dolphinscheduler
haystack has 26,531 GitHub stars, 3,144 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dolphinscheduler has 14,482 stars, 5,092 forks, 128 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack leads on adoption by 83% (26,531 vs 14,482 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; dolphinscheduler is written in Java under Apache-2.0. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, dolphinscheduler 35%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| haystack | dolphinscheduler | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 5.1K |
| 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 dolphinscheduler if
- You want the dolphinscheduler feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and dolphinscheduler 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 dolphinscheduler
Apache DolphinScheduler is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Java based data orchestration platform for data engineers, analytics teams and platform operators who need to schedule complex task dependencies across data pipelines without building the control plane themselves.
read the full dolphinscheduler overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Orchestration & Scheduling projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Orchestration & Scheduling field.
Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or dolphinscheduler more popular?
haystack has 26,531 GitHub stars and dolphinscheduler has 14,482. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and dolphinscheduler free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dolphinscheduler under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and dolphinscheduler?
haystack is written in Python and dolphinscheduler in Java. 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 dolphinscheduler?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,531 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dolphinscheduler if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.