Haystack vs LlamaIndex

Two fact sheets from our own research, side by side — pricing, platforms, API access and status re-checked by us rather than quoted from the vendors.

The short answer

Free plan: Both have one
Public API: Both have one
Best fit: Haystack: Python teams building production RAG or search applications · LlamaIndex: Developers building retrieval-augmented answers over PDFs, contracts and reports with tables and scans
Platforms: Haystack: Linux, macOS, Windows · LlamaIndex: Web, Linux
Trust score: About even — Haystack 90, LlamaIndex 87

From our own records as of each tool's last check. Anything we have not confirmed is left out rather than guessed. How we verify

HaystackApache-licensed Python framework for building RAG pipelines and agents out of swappable components, maintained by deepset.

LlamaIndexOpen-source data framework for retrieval and agents, with LlamaParse as the paid document parsing, extraction and indexing service

Side by side

Fact	Haystack	LlamaIndex
Category	LLM Orchestration Frameworks	Agent Frameworks & Orchestration
Pricing model	Freemium	Freemium
Starts at	—	$50/mo
Public API	Yes	Yes
Trust score	90 / 100	87 / 100
Platforms	Linux, macOS, Windows, API	API, Web, Linux
Company	deepset	LlamaIndex, Inc.
Launched	2019	2023
Last verified	Oct 2, 2026	Sep 6, 2026

What our research says

Haystack

Haystack is a mature, component-based alternative to LangChain for teams that want explicit, inspectable pipelines instead of hidden chains. It is code-first and aimed at engineers, so non-developers will not get far without the commercial platform. Pick it when retrieval quality and debuggability matter more than a huge ecosystem of ready-made recipes.

Pros

Apache 2.0 licence with an active repository maintained by a funded company
Modular components for retrieval, routing, memory and generation
Many model providers and vector databases supported out of the box
Pipelines are serializable and suitable for Kubernetes deployment

Cons

Code-only; building pipelines requires Python skills
Smaller community and fewer tutorials than LangChain
Enterprise features and support are sold separately with no published price

LlamaIndex

LlamaIndex is the pragmatic choice for a developer who wants retrieval over messy documents working this week: the open-source framework handles ingestion and querying, and LlamaParse does the hard part — tables, scans and layouts — as a paid API with a free tier large enough to prototype on. Teams that only need to chain model calls will find LangChain's ecosystem broader, and anyone parsing millions of pages should model the credit cost before committing, because agentic parsing multiplies the per-page rate.

Pros

Open-source framework with commercial-friendly licensing and connectors for most file and data sources
LlamaParse handles tables, multi-column layouts and scanned pages that plain text extractors mangle
Free tier of 10,000 credits a month and a $50 Starter plan make the cost curve gentle at the start
Enterprise options include private VPC and hybrid deployment, SSO and custom BAAs

Cons

Credit pricing is opaque until you test: basic pages cost one credit, agentic and VLM parsing cost several times more
The free tier allows file upload only, so connectors and external sources need a paid plan
Rapid API and library changes mean tutorials and integrations go stale quickly
Index limits (5 indexes, 50 files each on Free) are tight for anything beyond a demo

Which one fits

Choose Haystack if you need

Python teams building production RAG or search applications
Engineers who want explicit pipeline graphs they can serialize, test and deploy
Organizations that want an Apache-licensed core with optional vendor support

Choose LlamaIndex if you need

Developers building retrieval-augmented answers over PDFs, contracts and reports with tables and scans
Teams that want extraction of structured fields from documents without training their own layout models
Startups prototyping on the free tier and growing into metered usage rather than a seat licence