head to head · open source
langchain vs haystack
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars, 25,031 forks, 492 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack has 26,913 stars, 3,384 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. langchain leads on adoption by 453% (148,892 vs 26,913 stars). langchain is written in Python under MIT; haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0. langchain has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, haystack 13%. langchain was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (agents, ai, ai-agents, framework), 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
| langchain | haystack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 149K | ★ 27K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick langchain if
- You weight community size — 149K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick haystack if
- You want the haystack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and haystack fits your workflow better
About langchain
The agent engineering platform. LangChain is a framework for building agents and LLM powered applications. It helps you chain together interoperable components and third party integrations to simplify AI application development — all while future proofing decisions as the underlying technology evolves. [!TIP] Just getting started? Check out Deep Agents — a higher level package built on LangChain for agents that have built in capabilities for common usage patterns such as planning, subagents, file system usage, and more. Quickstart If you're looking for more advanced customization or agent orchestration, check…
read the full langchain overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is langchain or haystack more popular?
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars and haystack has 26,913. langchain has the larger community by that measure.
Are langchain and haystack free?
Both are open source. langchain is licensed under MIT and haystack under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between langchain and haystack?
langchain is written in Python and haystack 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, langchain or haystack?
Choose langchain if you want the larger community (148,892 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose haystack if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.