head to head · open source
llama_index vs dagster
llama_index has 52,202 GitHub stars, 8,162 forks, 770 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dagster has 16,169 stars, 2,294 forks, 2,589 open issues and last shipped yesterday. llama_index leads on adoption by 223% (52,202 vs 16,169 stars). llama_index is written in Python under MIT; dagster is written in Python under Apache-2.0. llama_index has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, dagster 14%. llama_index was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | dagster | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.2K | ⑂ 2.3K |
| 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 dagster if
- You want the dagster 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 dagster 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 dagster
Dagster is a cloud native data pipeline orchestrator written in Python and released under the Apache 2.0 licence, built for data engineers, data scientists, and machine learning teams who declare the tables, data sets, models, and reports their pipelines should produce and need those assets tested, observable, and kept up to date from local development through production.
read the full dagster overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is llama_index or dagster more popular?
llama_index has 52,202 GitHub stars and dagster has 16,169. llama_index has the larger community by that measure.
Are llama_index and dagster free?
Both are open source. llama_index is licensed under MIT and dagster under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between llama_index and dagster?
llama_index is written in Python and dagster 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, llama_index or dagster?
Choose llama_index if you want the larger community (52,202 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dagster if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.