head to head · open source
haystack vs Inngest
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Inngest has 5,853 stars, 358 forks, 234 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack leads on adoption by 354% (26,559 vs 5,853 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Inngest is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Inngest 6%. Inngest 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 | Inngest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 358 |
| 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 Inngest if
- You want the Inngest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Inngest 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 Inngest
Inngest is an open source workflow orchestration platform that lets developers write durable, event driven step functions in their existing language SDKs and run them on serverless, long running servers, or the edge.
read the full Inngest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or Inngest more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and Inngest has 5,853. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and Inngest free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Inngest has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between haystack and Inngest?
haystack is written in Python and Inngest 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 Inngest?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Inngest if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.