LlamaIndex alternatives

5 tools you can use instead of LlamaIndex, ranked by live GitHub stars and npm downloads. LangChain, CrewAI and LangGraph are the most used. Stats updated 5 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

LlamaIndex pricing, features and usage

The alternatives

Most used first.

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 148knpm a week 3.8M

LlamaIndex vs LangChain

CrewAI

MIT-licensed Python framework for multi-agent workflows, with a paid platform for deployment.

Pricing Open sourcePaid from Enterprise: custom quoteOpen source yes

View CrewAI

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 yes

View LangGraph

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 yes

View Mastra

Vercel AI SDK

Free open source TypeScript toolkit from Vercel for building AI apps and agents across many model providers.

Pricing Open sourceOpen source yes

View Vercel AI SDK

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	52.4k
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	148k
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	None
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	None
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)	None
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	None

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, LangChain is the most used alternative to LlamaIndex listed on ScratchDB, with 148k stars.

Which LlamaIndex alternatives are open source?

LangChain, CrewAI, LangGraph, Mastra and Vercel AI SDK are open source.

Which LlamaIndex alternatives have a free plan?

LangChain has a free plan. The table on this page shows what each one includes.

All LLM Frameworks tools