head to head · open source
haystack vs hcom
haystack has 26,924 GitHub stars, 3,388 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hcom has 626 stars, 104 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. haystack leads on adoption by 4,201% (26,924 vs 626 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; hcom is written in Rust under MIT. haystack has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, hcom 17%. haystack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| haystack | hcom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 626 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 104 |
| 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 hcom if
- You want the hcom feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and hcom 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 hcom
hcom Hook your coding agents together hcom is a CLI that coding agents use to message, watch, and spawn each other across terminals. Works with Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Kilo Code, Pi, Oh My Pi, Antigravity, Cursor, Kimi and Copilot in any combination, without changing how you use them. Use it to coordinate pipelines, run different AI CLIs as each other's subagents, or just instead of copy paste. Single Rust binary, no background services. Start an agent with hcom in front, then prompt normally. Install Other install options Quickstart Terminal 1: Terminal 2: Prompt: ask the other agent their favorite cake…
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 hcom more popular?
haystack has 26,924 GitHub stars and hcom has 626. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and hcom free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and hcom under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and hcom?
haystack is written in Python and hcom 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 hcom?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,924 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose hcom if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.