head to head · open source
haystack vs osmedeus
haystack has 26,531 GitHub stars, 3,144 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. osmedeus has 6,568 stars, 1,031 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. haystack leads on adoption by 304% (26,531 vs 6,568 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; osmedeus is written in Go under MIT. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, osmedeus 16%. haystack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (agentic-ai), 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 | osmedeus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 osmedeus if
- You want the osmedeus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and osmedeus 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 osmedeus
Osmedeus is a security focused declarative orchestration engine written in Go and released under the MIT license. It turns complex security workflow automation into auditable YAML definitions, and it pairs that declarative model with encrypted data handling, secure credential management, and sandboxed execution. The project has been public for roughly eight years, carries about 6,563 stars and 1,030 forks, and lives in the penetration testing, reconnaissance, and attack surface management corner of the open source security ecosystem. It is distributed both as shell installed binaries and as the npm package @j3ssi…
read the full osmedeus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or osmedeus more popular?
haystack has 26,531 GitHub stars and osmedeus has 6,568. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and osmedeus free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and osmedeus under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and osmedeus?
haystack is written in Python and osmedeus in Go. 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 osmedeus?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,531 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose osmedeus if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.