head to head · open source
langchain vs PixelRAG
langchain has 148,851 GitHub stars, 25,018 forks, 492 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PixelRAG has 10,823 stars, 978 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. langchain leads on adoption by 1,275% (148,851 vs 10,823 stars). langchain is written in Python under MIT; PixelRAG is written in Python under Apache-2.0. langchain has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, PixelRAG 9%. langchain was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai), 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 | PixelRAG | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 149K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 978 |
| 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 PixelRAG if
- You want the PixelRAG 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 PixelRAG 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 PixelRAG
Official codebase for PIXELRAG: Web Screenshots Beat Text for Retrieval Augmented Generation Yichuan Wang , Zhifei Li , Zirui Wang , Paul Teiletche , Lesheng Jin Matei Zaharia †, Joseph E. Gonzalez †, Sewon Min † Equal contribution † Equal advising Work done at Berkeley SkyLab & BAIR & Berkeley NLP Search any document by how it looks , not just the text it contains. What it is · Give Claude eyes · How it works · Pipelines The two core operations — render a page to screenshots, search a visual index: Live, hosted endpoint — serves a pre built index of 8.28M Wikipedia pages . No setup, no API…
read the full PixelRAG overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is langchain or PixelRAG more popular?
langchain has 148,851 GitHub stars and PixelRAG has 10,823. langchain has the larger community by that measure.
Are langchain and PixelRAG free?
Both are open source. langchain is licensed under MIT and PixelRAG under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between langchain and PixelRAG?
langchain is written in Python and PixelRAG 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 PixelRAG?
Choose langchain if you want the larger community (148,851 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose PixelRAG if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.