head to head · open source
llama_index vs haystack
llama_index has 52,779 GitHub stars, 8,500 forks, 770 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. haystack has 26,913 stars, 3,384 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. llama_index leads on adoption by 96% (52,779 vs 26,913 stars). llama_index is written in Python under MIT; haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0. llama_index has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, haystack 13%. haystack 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
| llama_index | haystack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 53K | ★ 27K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-26 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.5K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick llama_index if
- You weight community size — 53K 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 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 →
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 llama_index or haystack more popular?
llama_index has 52,779 GitHub stars and haystack has 26,913. llama_index has the larger community by that measure.
Are llama_index and haystack free?
Both are open source. llama_index is licensed under MIT and haystack under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between llama_index and haystack?
llama_index 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, llama_index or haystack?
Choose llama_index if you want the larger community (52,779 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose haystack if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.