head to head · open source
langchain vs llama_index
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars, 25,031 forks, 492 open issues and last shipped yesterday. llama_index has 52,779 stars, 8,500 forks, 770 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. langchain leads on adoption by 182% (148,892 vs 52,779 stars). langchain is written in Python under MIT; llama_index is written in Python under MIT. langchain has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, llama_index 16%. langchain was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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 | llama_index | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 149K | ★ 53K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 8.5K |
| 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 llama_index if
- You want the llama_index feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and llama_index 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 llama_index
🗂️ LlamaIndex (OSS Framework) 🦙 [!NOTE] The current focus of LlamaIndex is to build the best AI powered engine for document parsing and extraction. LlamaParse is our enterprise platform for agentic OCR, parsing, extraction, indexing and more. LiteParse represents our efforts to build the best free, fast, cheap text parser in the market. ParseBench and ExtractBench represent our commitment towards open benchmarking for parsing and extraction. The company itself has undergone an evolution since when this OSS framework first launched 3 years ago in 2023. Since the early days, the framework has consisted of a…
read the full llama_index overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is langchain or llama_index more popular?
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars and llama_index has 52,779. langchain has the larger community by that measure.
Are langchain and llama_index free?
Both are open source. langchain is licensed under MIT and llama_index under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between langchain and llama_index?
langchain is written in Python and llama_index 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 llama_index?
Choose langchain if you want the larger community (148,892 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose llama_index if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.