head to head · open source
haystack vs viewflow
haystack has 26,913 GitHub stars, 3,384 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. viewflow has 2,873 stars, 415 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. haystack leads on adoption by 837% (26,913 vs 2,873 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; viewflow is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. haystack has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, viewflow 14%. 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.
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Side by side
| haystack | viewflow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 2.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 415 |
| 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 viewflow if
- You want the viewflow feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and viewflow 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 viewflow
Viewflow The low code for developers with yesterday's deadline [![build]][build] [![coverage]][coverage] [![pypi version]][pypi] [![py versions]][pypi] Viewflow is a low code library for building business applications with Django. It gives you ready made components for user management, workflows, and reporting. You write less code but keep full control. You can customize everything and connect it to your existing systems. Build full featured business applications in a few lines of code. Viewflow ships as one package with everything included. Each part works on its own, but they all work well together. GPT…
read the full viewflow overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or viewflow more popular?
haystack has 26,913 GitHub stars and viewflow has 2,873. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and viewflow free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and viewflow under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and viewflow?
haystack is written in Python and viewflow in Python. 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 viewflow?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,913 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose viewflow if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.