head to head · open source
llama_index vs Spanlens
llama_index has 52,779 GitHub stars, 8,500 forks, 770 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Spanlens has 13 stars, 1 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped yesterday. llama_index leads on adoption by 405,892% (52,779 vs 13 stars). llama_index is written in Python under MIT; Spanlens is written in TypeScript under MIT. llama_index has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Spanlens 8%. Spanlens was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | Spanlens | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 53K | ★ 13 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-26 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.5K | ⑂ 1 |
| 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 Spanlens if
- You want the Spanlens feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Spanlens 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 Spanlens
Spanlens Open source LLM observability you can turn on in one line. Point your OpenAI, Anthropic, or Gemini client at Spanlens and every call is logged with cost, tokens, latency, and full agent traces. No SDK rewrite, no platform migration. Eleven providers supported, plus native Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, and LlamaIndex integrations, and you can query it all from Cursor or Claude Desktop through the bundled MCP server. Self hostable in one Docker command. MIT. Why it exists. I shipped an LLM app on OpenAI and Gemini and hit a wall. The provider dashboards showed total spend and nothing else. I could not tell…
read the full Spanlens overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is llama_index or Spanlens more popular?
llama_index has 52,779 GitHub stars and Spanlens has 13. llama_index has the larger community by that measure.
Are llama_index and Spanlens free?
Both are open source. llama_index is licensed under MIT and Spanlens under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between llama_index and Spanlens?
llama_index is written in Python and Spanlens in TypeScript. 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 Spanlens?
Choose llama_index if you want the larger community (52,779 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Spanlens if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.