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LangChain vs LlamaIndex

Trust Score comparison · March 2026

LangChain
96
Trust
Excellent
View profile
VS
Trust Score Δ
14
🏆 LangChain wins
LlamaIndex
82
Trust
Good
View profile

Signal Comparison

8.2M / wkPyPI downloads300k / wk
201 commitsCommits (90d)300 commits
95k ★GitHub stars38k ★
7.8k q'sStack Overflow5k q's
HighCommunityLarge & active
LangChainLlamaIndex

Key Differences

FactorLangChainLlamaIndex
LicenseMITMIT
LanguagePython / TypeScriptTypeScript / Python
HostedSelf-hostedSelf-hosted
Free tier
Open Source✓ Yes
TypeScript

Pick LangChain if…

  • You need the largest pre-built tool ecosystem for agents
  • You're building complex multi-step workflows
  • Your team already has LangChain experience

Pick LlamaIndex if…

  • Building RAG over documents, PDFs, or databases
  • You want a data-centric approach vs LangChain's agent-centric
  • Complex ingestion pipelines with multiple data sources

Side-by-side Quick Start

LangChain
from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI
from langchain_core.prompts import ChatPromptTemplate

llm = ChatOpenAI(model="gpt-4o")

prompt = ChatPromptTemplate.from_messages([
    ("system", "You are a helpful assistant."),
    ("user", "{input}"),
])

chain = prompt | llm
response = chain.invoke({"input": "Hello!"})
print(response.content)
LlamaIndex
import { VectorStoreIndex, SimpleDirectoryReader } from 'llamaindex';

const documents = await new SimpleDirectoryReader().loadData({ directoryPath: './data' });
const index = await VectorStoreIndex.fromDocuments(documents);
const queryEngine = index.asQueryEngine();
const response = await queryEngine.query({ query: 'What is the main topic?' });
console.log(response.toString());

Community Verdict

Based on upvoted notes
🏆
LangChain wins this comparison
Trust Score 96 vs 82 · 14-point difference

LangChain leads on Trust Score with stronger signal data across downloads and community health. That said, the other tool is worth considering if your use case matches its specific strengths above.