# FastRAG vs Pathway

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Pathway

| Attribute | FastRAG | Pathway |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 47.4 (35% (low)) | 59.4 (36% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 0 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 0 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 1,785 | - |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A toolkit for researchers and developers to construct and optimize RAG applications. It provides streamlined components for retrieval and generation, with support for multiple LLM backends and hardware accelerators, and maintains compatibility with the Haystack framework. | Pathway Live Data Framework is a scalable, open-source data processing platform that enables continuous, real-time data pipeline construction for AI applications. It provides unified stream and batch processing with built-in support for retrieval-augmented generation, agentic systems, and multimodal data handling. |
| features.capabilities | `{"open_source":true,"multimodal_rag":true,"llm_provider_agnostic":true,"embedding_provider_agnostic":true}` | `{"open_source":true,"multimodal_rag":true,"hybrid_retrieval":true,"llm_provider_agnostic":true,"managed_ingestion_pipeline":true,"embedding_provider_agnostic":true,"multi_hop_agentic_retrieval":true}` |
| integrations.count | 6 | 300 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Haystack"},{"name":"HuggingFace"},{"name":"Elastic"},{"name":"Qdrant"},{"name":"OpenVINO"},{"name":"LlamaCpp"}]` | `[{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"Apache Spark"},{"name":"Amazon S3"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"Redpanda"},{"name":"Logstash"},{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Google Pub/Sub"},{"name":"Microsoft Sharepoint"},{"name":"Delta Lake"},{"name":"Apache Iceberg"},{"name":"Google BigQuery"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"QuestDB"},{"name":"MQTT"},{"name":"OpenAI"},{"name":"Ollama"},{"name":"Mistral"},{"name":"LiteLLM"},{"name":"Sentence Transformers"},{"name":"Docling"}]` |
| language.primary | Python | - |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | - |
| market.availability | - | `{"hqCountry":"US","primaryMarkets":["US","EU"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"cli":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://github.com/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-21T10:58:48.479Z"}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Community","features":["300+ API connectors to data sources","Kafka, S3, PostgreSQL, cloud database connectors","Sub-millisecond REST API endpoints","Python and SQL programming interfaces","Streaming and batch processing","Advanced joins, windows, temporal operations","Rust-based streaming engine","Jupyter notebook support","Vector indexing (HNSW, BM25, hybrid)","LLM extension pack","Unstructured data parsing","Community support"],"description":"Open-source framework under BSL 1.1 license with self-hosted deployment","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"ram":"8 GB","cores":"4"}},{"free":false,"name":"Scale","features":["All Community features","20+ pre-built application templates","Basic RAG pipelines, document processing, log monitoring","Kafka ETL and social media analytics templates","Business support with 1-business day response","Free pipeline design consultation","Developer assistance program"],"description":"Scalable tier for production deployments with cloud hosting options","contactSales":true,"includedLimits":{"ram":"24 TB","cores":"128","nodes":"40"}},{"free":false,"name":"Enterprise","features":["All Scale features","Advanced connectors (Sharepoint, Delta Lake, Iceberg, BigQuery, Elasticsearch, QuestDB)","MQTT/IoT and custom messaging connectors","High-availability failover","Kubernetes deployment","OpenTelemetry and Grafana monitoring","Real-time geospatial analytics","Visual live dashboards","Historical data snapshots","Industry-specific solutions","Professional services and custom pipelines","Multi-zone SLA","24/7 phone support"],"description":"Fully managed tier with advanced connectors and dedicated support","contactSales":true}],"summary":"Free Community tier; Scale and Enterprise licenses available (specific pricing not published)","currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://pathway.com/framework/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-21T10:57:45.277Z"}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | yes |
| pricing.model | commercial | freemium |
| pricing.price_level | free | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| release.cadence_days | 22 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v3.1.2","date":"2024-11-25T10:09:51Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.1.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v3.1.1","date":"2024-11-24T14:22:46Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.1.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v3.1.0","date":"2024-11-07T14:21:16Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.1.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v3.0.2","date":"2024-07-09T09:49:53Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v3.0.1","date":"2024-07-02T13:38:09Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v3.0","date":"2024-05-22T15:13:25Z","type":"stable","version":"v3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v2.0","date":"2023-12-24T16:24:05Z","type":"stable","version":"v2.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v1.3.0","date":"2023-06-20T12:06:34Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.3.0"},{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v1.2.1","date":"2023-06-13T10:57:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.2.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/IntelLabs/fastRAG/releases/tag/v1.2.0","date":"2023-05-21T11:05:07Z","type":"stable","version":"v1.2.0"}]` | - |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=go&package_name=github.com%2FIntelLabs%2FfastRAG&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | - |

## Capabilities (RAG Tools)

| Capability | FastRAG | Pathway |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Capabilities** |  |  |
| Hybrid retrieval | - | ✓ |
| Reranking integration | - | - |
| Multi hop agentic retrieval | - | ✓ |
| Embedding provider agnostic | ✓ | ✓ |
| LLM provider agnostic | ✓ | ✓ |
| Built in rag eval metrics | - | - |
| Citation attribution | - | - |
| Multimodal rag | ✓ | ✓ |
| Managed ingestion pipeline | - | ✓ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✓ |

*Source: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T14:39:30.753Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*