Alternatives to Langchain
Langchain is is An open-source framework for building context-aware reasoning applications powered by large language models (LLMs). Here are some key alternative platforms and frameworks in this space:
LlamaIndex
A data framework specifically designed for ingesting, structuring, and accessing private or domain-specific data for LLM applications. It offers deeper focus and optimization on data indexing and retrieval (RAG) compared to LangChain's broader toolkit.
Haystack
An open-source framework by deepset focused on building production-ready LLM applications, particularly strong in search, question answering, and retrieval augmentation. It provides robust components for building complex NLP pipelines often geared towards enterprise search.
Microsoft Semantic Kernel
An SDK that enables integrating LLMs like OpenAI/Azure OpenAI into applications using composable plugins ('skills') and planning capabilities. It offers a more structured, code-centric approach compared to LangChain's chaining philosophy, with strong support for C#/.NET alongside Python.
DSPy
A framework from Stanford NLP that focuses on programming LLMs rather than just prompting them, emphasizing optimizing prompts and weights programmatically. It shifts focus from manual prompt engineering to algorithmic optimization of LLM pipelines.
LiteLLM
A library providing a standardized interface for calling various LLM APIs (OpenAI, Azure, Cohere, Anthropic, Bedrock etc.). Its core function is simplifying cross-provider API calls and management, rather than full application orchestration like LangChain.