Haystack vs LlamaIndex
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Haystack if you want open-source python framework for production rag, search, and agents (Supervised agent, freemium); choose LlamaIndex if you want open-source data framework for rag pipelines and data-grounded agents (Supervised agent, freemium).
| Haystack | LlamaIndex | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Open-source Python framework for production RAG, search, and agents | Open-source data framework for RAG pipelines and data-grounded agents |
| Type | framework | framework |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | freemium | freemium · Framework free (MIT); LlamaCloud has a free tier |
| Best for | developers, enterprise | developers, enterprise, mid-market |
| Deployment | self-hosted, api | self-hosted, api, saas |
| Modalities | text, code, api, image | text, code, api |
| Models | model-agnostic, open-source | model-agnostic, gpt, claude, open-source |
| Protocols | function-calling, mcp, rest-api | function-calling, mcp, rest-api |
| Integrations | OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, Ollama, Qdrant, Weaviate | OpenAI, Anthropic, Pinecone, Qdrant, AWS Bedrock, Hugging Face |
| Capabilities | 4 documented | 4 documented |
Haystack
- +Mature, explicit, production-oriented architecture with deep RAG and search heritage
- +Broad integrations and an Apache-2.0 license, free to self-host
- +Backed by an established vendor (deepset) with an enterprise tier
- -Python-only
- -The component and pipeline model has a learning curve versus lighter agent SDKs
LlamaIndex
- +Best-in-class data and retrieval primitives (readers, indexes, retrievers, query engines) for grounding agents in your own data
- +Event-driven Workflows orchestrate multi-step agent processes with reflection and error-correction
- +Open source and model-agnostic, with LlamaCloud for managed document parsing and indexing
- -Framework, not a product: autonomy and quality depend entirely on what the developer builds
- -More oriented to data/RAG than to complex multi-agent orchestration compared with some peers
Which should you choose?
Haystack is open-source python framework for production rag, search, and agents, best for developers, enterprise. LlamaIndex is open-source data framework for rag pipelines and data-grounded agents, best for developers, enterprise, mid-market. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.