head to head · open source
llama_index vs Beam
llama_index has 52,202 GitHub stars, 8,162 forks, 770 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Beam has 1,780 stars, 165 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. llama_index leads on adoption by 2,833% (52,202 vs 1,780 stars). llama_index is written in Python under MIT; Beam is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. llama_index has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Beam 9%. llama_index was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (fine-tuning, llm), 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
| llama_index | Beam | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.2K | ⑂ 165 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick llama_index if
- You weight community size — 52K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Beam if
- You want the Beam feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Beam fits your workflow better
About llama_index
LlamaIndex is an MIT licensed, open source Python framework for building agentic applications — retrieval augmented generation systems, agents and multi agent workflows — on top of private documents and data, and it is aimed at AI engineers and teams who need to connect large language models to their own sources of context.
read the full llama_index overview →
About Beam
Beam is an open source runtime for serverless AI workloads, released under AGPL 3.0 and implemented in Go. It lives in the Python AI infrastructure ecosystem, where it gives developers a Pythonic interface for deploying and scaling GPU inference, sandboxes, and background jobs without managing infrastructure. The open source engine is Beta9, which powers the managed Beam cloud platform.
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Frequently asked questions
Is llama_index or Beam more popular?
llama_index has 52,202 GitHub stars and Beam has 1,780. llama_index has the larger community by that measure.
Are llama_index and Beam free?
Both are open source. llama_index is licensed under MIT and Beam under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between llama_index and Beam?
llama_index is written in Python and Beam in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, llama_index or Beam?
Choose llama_index if you want the larger community (52,202 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Beam if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.