Haystack vs Vellum

Haystack is an open-source AI orchestration framework for developers building agents, multimodal applications, advanced retrieval-augmented generation systems and scalable search. Applications are assembled as modular pipelines from components such as retrievers, routers, memory layers, tools, evaluators and generators. Pipelines can run on users’ own infrastructure and be served as REST APIs or MCP servers with Hayhooks. The integrations directory lists 189 options across model providers, vector databases, monitoring tools and community components, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Amazon Bedrock, Elasticsearch, Pinecone and Datadog. A separate Enterprise Platform adds a visual pipeline builder, debugging, templates, indexing, a playground, prompt exploration, deployment and monitoring tools. It can run in managed cloud or self-hosted infrastructure and exposes a REST API. Listed enterprise security and compliance provisions include SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, CSA Star Level 1, RBAC, audit logs, traces, guardrails and SSO. A free platform trial is available by form request and includes cloud infrastructure for prototypes.

Vellum is a personal AI assistant that can read files, manage calendars, send email, run code, and control a computer. It saves preferences and context in its workspace for later conversations, and users can create, install, and manage skills. Listed OAuth services include Discord, GitHub, Google services, HubSpot, Linear, Twitter (X), Asana, Notion, Microsoft Outlook, and Todoist. Vellum says OAuth tokens stay in a credential vault rather than being exposed to the language model. Sensitive actions prompt for approval, and users can set trust rules for standing permissions. By default, conversation context is sent to Anthropic to generate responses; OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter, Fireworks, and local Ollama are listed alternatives. An internet connection is required. Vellum Cloud runs assistants in isolated environments with private storage and 24/7 availability. The Free plan includes first tasks and pay-as-you-go credits. Mighty costs $30 a month, Super $100 a month, and Ultra $200 a month. There is no shipped Linux desktop client, but Linux users can use the web app, Chrome extension, or self-host the runtime.