head to head · open source
haystack vs puppetry
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars, 3,153 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. puppetry has 888 stars, 127 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. haystack leads on adoption by 2,891% (26,559 vs 888 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; puppetry is written in JavaScript under MIT. haystack has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, puppetry 14%. haystack 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
| haystack | puppetry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 888 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-06-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 127 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick haystack if
- You weight community size — 27K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick puppetry if
- You want the puppetry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and puppetry fits your workflow better
About haystack
Haystack is an open source AI orchestration framework written in Python under the Apache 2.0 licence, for building context engineered, production ready large language model applications as modular pipelines and agent workflows with explicit control over retrieval, routing, memory, and generation, and it is aimed at developers and teams building scalable agents, retrieval augmented generation, multimodal applications, semantic search, question answering, and conversational systems.
read the full haystack overview →
About puppetry
Puppetry is a no code/low code end to end web testing tool built on top of Puppeteer and Jest, aimed at QA engineers, testers, and developers who want to record and manage browser tests through a UI instead of writing scripts — though the project is now officially deprecated and kept only as an example and a piece of its own history.
read the full puppetry overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or puppetry more popular?
haystack has 26,559 GitHub stars and puppetry has 888. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and puppetry free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and puppetry under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and puppetry?
haystack is written in Python and puppetry in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, haystack or puppetry?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,559 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose puppetry if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.