Haystack vs LlamaIndex vs LangChain vs DSPy
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Haystack
Open-source orchestration framework from deepset for building producti...
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LlamaIndex
Framework for production retrieval-augmented generation
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LangChain
Most popular framework for building LLM applications
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DSPy
Stanford's framework for programming language models with modular Pyth...
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| RECATOOLS Score | 7.5 / 10 | 8 / 10 | 8.1 / 10 | 7.5 / 10 |
| Capability | — | — | ||
| Value for money | — | — | ||
| Ease of use | — | — | ||
| ASEAN readiness | — | — | ||
| API quality | — | — | ||
| Pricing | Freemium | Open Source | Open Source | Open Source |
| Free tier | Open-source framework (Apache-2.0) is free to self-host. | Free and open source — self-host at no cost | Open source framework is free; LangSmith has a free developer tier | Fully free and open-source (MIT); you pay only for the underlying model calls. |
| Paid from | Enterprise is quoted by deepset; the framework and the Studio tier are free | — | $39/month (LangSmith Plus) | — |
| Has API | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | 25K+ GitHub stars | — | 1m+ developers | 35K+ GitHub stars |
| Founded | 2020 | 2022 | 2022 | 2023 |
| Maker | deepset | — | Harrison Chase | Stanford NLP |
| Verdict | What this is for: Building production RAG, search, and agent pipelines with explicit, testable, modular components. Who this is for: Engineering teams that need control and observability over retrieval and generation, f... |
LlamaIndex is a leading open-source data framework for connecting LLMs to private data — ingestion, indexing, retrieval, and increasingly agentic workflows. Alongside LangChain it is one of the two default choices for bu... |
Still the default starting point for LLM apps, and meaningfully more stable since LangChain 1.0 and LangGraph 1.0 shipped in October 2025 — agents now run on LangGraph's durable runtime, and the team has promised no brea... |
What this is for: Building LLM pipelines and agents as modular, optimizable Python programs instead of brittle prompt strings. Who this is for: ML engineers and researchers who want systematic, reproducible prompt/weigh... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.