Haystack vs LlamaIndex
A side-by-side comparison of Haystack and LlamaIndex, two Orchestration tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
LlamaIndex
OrchestrationThe data framework for LLM apps — RAG, agents, and document workflows.
View LlamaIndexAt a glance
| Attribute | Haystack | LlamaIndex |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Orchestration | Orchestration |
| Pricing (differs) | FREE | FREEMIUM |
| License (differs) | Open source | Open core |
| Deployment | — | — |
| Platforms (differs) | API | API, CLI |
| Model support | Model-agnostic | Model-agnostic |
| Vendor (differs) | deepset | LlamaIndex |
The honest brief
Haystack
More production-oriented and explicitly composable than lighter agent libraries: typed pipelines give direct control over retrieval, routing, and memory.
- Composable, typed pipeline architecture
- Model- and vector-store agnostic
- Strong production tooling
- Mature docs and integrations
- Pipeline model has a learning curve
- Python-only
- Heavier than minimal agent libraries
LlamaIndex
Retrieval-first where LangChain is orchestration-first — LlamaParse is the go-to for PDFs that defeat normal parsers.
- Best-in-class RAG primitives
- LlamaParse for hard documents
- Python + TypeScript
- Managed LlamaCloud option
- Narrower than full orchestration frameworks
- LlamaCloud parsing is paid
- API churn between versions