head to head · open source
langgraph vs haystack
langgraph has 44,336 GitHub stars, 7,622 forks, 786 open issues and last shipped yesterday. haystack has 26,913 stars, 3,384 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. langgraph leads on adoption by 65% (44,336 vs 26,913 stars). langgraph is written in Python under MIT; haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0. langgraph has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, haystack 13%. langgraph 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
| langgraph | haystack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 27K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.6K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick langgraph if
- You weight community size — 44K 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 langgraph
Low level orchestration framework for building stateful agents. Trusted by companies shaping the future of agents – including Klarna, Replit, Elastic, and more – LangGraph is a low level orchestration framework for building, managing, and deploying long running, stateful agents. [!TIP] If you're looking to quickly build agents, check out Deep Agents — a higher level package built on LangGraph for agents that can plan, use subagents, and leverage file systems for complex tasks. For an equivalent JS/TS library, check out LangGraph.js and the JS docs. Why use LangGraph? LangGraph provides low level supporting…
read the full langgraph 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 langgraph or haystack more popular?
langgraph has 44,336 GitHub stars and haystack has 26,913. langgraph has the larger community by that measure.
Are langgraph and haystack free?
Both are open source. langgraph is licensed under MIT and haystack under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between langgraph and haystack?
langgraph 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, langgraph or haystack?
Choose langgraph if you want the larger community (44,336 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose haystack if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.