Vercel AI SDK
Free open source TypeScript toolkit from Vercel for building AI apps and agents across many model providers.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 27.5knpm a week 34M
LlamaIndex alternatives
7 tools you can use instead of LlamaIndex, ranked by live GitHub stars and npm downloads. Vercel AI SDK, LangChain and CrewAI are the most used. Stats updated 7 hours ago.
When LlamaIndex is not a good fit
LlamaIndex is an open source framework for building retrieval-augmented generation and agent applications by connecting language models to external data: documents, databases and APIs. The core LlamaIndex library and Workflows are free and open source. The company also sells LlamaParse, a commercial document parsing platform with a free tier and paid plans from $50 a month, priced on a credit system.
It is a weaker choice for:
- Teams that want a single, broad orchestration framework for many kinds of agent workflows beyond data retrieval, where LangChain may fit better
- High-volume document parsing on a tight budget, where LlamaParse's credit-based pricing needs to be checked against your document volume
- Projects that don't need retrieval or external data connected to their LLM calls
The alternatives
Most used first.
View Vercel AI SDK
LangChain
Open source framework for building applications with language models, paired with the LangSmith platform.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $39 a seat a month for LangSmith Plus, plus usage-based compute and storageOpen source yesStars 149knpm a week 3.7M
CrewAI
MIT-licensed Python framework for multi-agent workflows, with a paid platform for deployment.
Pricing Open sourcePaid from Enterprise: custom quoteOpen source yesStars 60.1k
Mastra
TypeScript framework for AI agents and workflows, Apache 2.0 licensed, with a managed platform.
Pricing Open sourcePaid from $250 a month for TeamsOpen source yesStars 29.1knpm a week 2.3M
LangGraph
Low-level orchestration framework from LangChain for long-running, stateful agents.
Pricing Open sourcePaid from $39 per seat a month for LangSmith PlusOpen source yesStars 43.9k
DSPy
Python framework from Stanford NLP for programming language model systems instead of writing prompts.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 38.8k
Haystack
Open source Python framework from deepset for building LLM applications, RAG pipelines and agents.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 26.9k
LlamaIndex and its alternatives, side by side
| Tool | Pricing | Free plan | Paid from | Open source | GitHub stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LlamaIndex | Freemium | Yes: the LlamaIndex framework is free and open source; LlamaParse has a free tier with 10,000 credits | $50 a month for the LlamaParse Starter plan | Yes, MIT | 52.7k |
| Vercel AI SDK | Open source | The library is free and open source. You pay the model providers you call. | Not listed | Yes, Apache-2.0 | 27.5k |
| LangChain | Freemium | Yes: the LangChain framework is free and open source; LangSmith has a free Developer tier with up to 5,000 base traces a month | $39 a seat a month for LangSmith Plus, plus usage-based compute and storage | Yes, MIT | 149k |
| CrewAI | Open source | The framework is free and open source. The hosted Basic plan is $0 a month with 50 executions a month. | Enterprise: custom quote | Yes, MIT | 60.1k |
| Mastra | Open source | The self-hosted framework is free. The managed Starter plan is $0 a month with 100K events and 24 CPU hours included. | $250 a month for Teams | Yes, Apache-2.0 (core), Mastra Enterprise License (ee directories) | 29.1k |
| LangGraph | Open source | The framework is free and open source. LangSmith has a Developer plan at $0 per seat a month, with up to 5k base traces a month. | $39 per seat a month for LangSmith Plus | Yes, MIT | 43.9k |
| DSPy | Open source | Yes: free and open source | Not listed | Yes, MIT | 38.8k |
| Haystack | Open source | Yes: the framework is free and open source | Not listed | Yes, Apache-2.0 | 26.9k |
Pricing facts come from each tool's official pricing page, with the checked date on the tool's own page.
Questions
What is the most popular alternative to LlamaIndex?
By GitHub stars, Vercel AI SDK is the most used alternative to LlamaIndex listed on ScratchDB, with 27.5k stars.
Which LlamaIndex alternatives are open source?
Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, CrewAI, Mastra, LangGraph, DSPy and Haystack are open source.
Which LlamaIndex alternatives have a free plan?
LangChain, DSPy and Haystack have a free plan. The table on this page shows what each one includes.