head to head · open source
haystack vs hcom
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hcom has 507 stars, 79 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. haystack leads on adoption by 5,138% (26,559 vs 507 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; hcom is written in Rust under MIT. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, hcom 16%. 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.
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Side by side
| haystack | hcom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 507 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 79 |
| 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 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 hcom
hcom is a Rust CLI that lets AI coding agents such as Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Kilo Code, Pi, Oh My Pi, Antigravity, Cursor, Kimi, Copilot, and Gemini message, watch, and spawn one another across terminals, aimed at developers who already run more than one agent at a time.
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or hcom more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and hcom has 507. 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 (26,559 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose hcom if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.