head to head · open source
langchain vs haystack
langchain has 146,562 GitHub stars, 24,508 forks, 492 open issues and last shipped today. haystack has 26,534 stars, 3,144 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped today. langchain leads on adoption by 452% (146,562 vs 26,534 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 12%. 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 | ★ 147K | ★ 27K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick langchain if
- You weight community size — 147K 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
LangChain is an open source framework for building agents and LLM powered applications, written in Python and released under the MIT license. It lives in the AI and machine learning ecosystem, specifically among AI development platforms, and it works by chaining together interoperable components and third party integrations so that AI application development becomes simpler. The project describes itself as the agent engineering platform, and its abstractions are designed to keep applications working as the underlying technology evolves.
read the full langchain overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is langchain or haystack more popular?
langchain has 146,562 GitHub stars and haystack has 26,534. 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 (146,562 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose haystack if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.