head to head · open source
haystack vs Trigger
haystack has 26,913 GitHub stars, 3,384 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Trigger has 16,699 stars, 1,523 forks, 342 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. haystack leads on adoption by 61% (26,913 vs 16,699 stars). haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Trigger is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. haystack has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Trigger 9%. haystack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, ai-agents), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| haystack | Trigger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 27K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 Trigger if
- You want the Trigger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Trigger fits your workflow better
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 →
About Trigger
Build and deploy fully‑managed AI agents and workflows Website Docs Issues Example projects Feature requests Public roadmap Self hosting About Trigger.dev Trigger.dev is the open source platform for building AI workflows in TypeScript. Long running tasks with retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling. The platform designed for building AI agents Build AI agents using all the frameworks, services and LLMs you're used to, deploy them to Trigger.dev and get durable, long running tasks with retries, queues, observability, and elastic scaling out of the box. Long running without timeouts : Execute your…
read the full Trigger overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Orchestration & Scheduling projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Orchestration & Scheduling field.
Frequently asked questions
Is haystack or Trigger more popular?
haystack has 26,913 GitHub stars and Trigger has 16,699. haystack has the larger community by that measure.
Are haystack and Trigger free?
Both are open source. haystack is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Trigger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between haystack and Trigger?
haystack is written in Python and Trigger 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, haystack or Trigger?
Choose haystack if you want the larger community (26,913 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Trigger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.