head to head · open source
haystack vs sidequest
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. sidequest has 1,015 stars, 25 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. haystack leads on adoption by 2,517% (26,559 vs 1,015 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; sidequest is written in TypeScript under LGPL-3.0. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, sidequest 2%. 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 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| haystack | sidequest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 25 |
| 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 sidequest if
- You want the sidequest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sidequest 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 sidequest
Sidequest is a Redis free background job processor for Node.js that persists jobs in the PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or MongoDB database an application already runs, aimed at teams that need durable, distributed queue processing without operating Redis.
read the full sidequest 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 sidequest more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and sidequest has 1,015. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and sidequest free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sidequest under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and sidequest?
haystack is written in Python and sidequest in TypeScript. 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 sidequest?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sidequest if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.