head to head · open source
haystack vs smythos-studio
haystack has 26,645 GitHub stars, 3,220 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. smythos-studio has 555 stars, 82 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. haystack leads on adoption by 4,701% (26,645 vs 555 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; smythos-studio is written in TypeScript under MIT. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, smythos-studio 15%. haystack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (agentic-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 | smythos-studio | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 555 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-02 | 2026-04-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 82 |
| 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 smythos-studio if
- You want the smythos-studio feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and smythos-studio 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 smythos-studio
SmythOS Studio is an open source visual builder and deployable runtime stack from SmythOS for creating, testing, and hosting AI agents through a drag and drop workspace that individuals and teams can run locally, in the cloud, or at the edge.
read the full smythos-studio overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or smythos-studio more popular?
haystack has 26,645 GitHub stars and smythos-studio has 555. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and smythos-studio free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and smythos-studio under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and smythos-studio?
haystack is written in Python and smythos-studio 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 smythos-studio?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,645 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose smythos-studio if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.