Agentic Index
Haystack vs LlamaIndex (2026)
Choose Haystack for disciplined, self managed RAG pipeline engineering and choose LlamaIndex for managed ingestion and retrieval with less assembly. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Both are open source at the core; Haystack is free with flex priced deepset enterprise support, while LlamaIndex offers LlamaCloud from 50 dollars a month with a free tier. The practical split is build and operate your own pipelines versus buy the parsing and retrieval backend.
On the Agentic Index agent infrastructure ranking, Haystack clears the bar and LlamaIndex does not. Haystack documents all five production contract capabilities in full; LlamaIndex does not document observability and auditability in full. 34 of the 186 vendors in the lane clear it. See the agent infrastructure ranking
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Haystack and LlamaIndex are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 956 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Haystack if
- You want full control of pipeline components and run them on your own infrastructure
- Open source with optional enterprise support matches your compliance posture
- Your search stack predates LLMs and you want RAG grafted onto proven retrieval
Choose LlamaIndex if
- LlamaParse quality on complex documents saves you real engineering weeks
- A managed LlamaCloud backend beats operating ingestion infrastructure yourself
- You want data agents on top of retrieval without wiring every stage by hand
| At a glance | Haystack | LlamaIndex |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Agent infrastructure | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | OSS free; Enterprise flex-priced | From $50/mo · free tier |
| Free / trial | OSS free; Enterprise Platform free trial | Free (10k credits/mo) |
| Pricing confidence | public partial | public exact |
| Feature | H Haystack |
L LlamaIndex |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Partial | Partial |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Full / Explicit | Partial |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | H Haystack |
L LlamaIndex |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
OSS free; Enterprise flex-priced | From $50/mo · free tier |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, partial | Public, exact |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
hybrid | credits |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tierTrial
|
Free tier
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Mixed |
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