head to head · open source
haystack vs donutbrowser
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. donutbrowser has 3,861 stars, 410 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack leads on adoption by 588% (26,559 vs 3,861 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; donutbrowser is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, donutbrowser 11%. donutbrowser 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 | donutbrowser | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 410 |
| 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 donutbrowser if
- You want the donutbrowser feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and donutbrowser 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 donutbrowser
Donut Browser is a free, open source anti detect browser written in Rust for anyone who needs many fully isolated browser identities — each with its own fingerprint, cookies, extensions, proxy, and VPN — running from one desktop install, and for the automation engineers and teams who script or sync those profiles.
read the full donutbrowser overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or donutbrowser more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and donutbrowser has 3,861. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and donutbrowser free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and donutbrowser under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and donutbrowser?
haystack is written in Python and donutbrowser in Rust. 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 donutbrowser?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose donutbrowser if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.