Pathway
A streaming data framework for building real-time AI and ML applications
- Also known as
- pathway
Available worldwide · Popular in: US, EU
What is Pathway?
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.
Pathway pricing
Plans, per-tier features and add-ons, dated and linked to live pricing. Pricing changes often; always verify at source before you rely on it.
Free Community tier; Scale and Enterprise licenses available (specific pricing not published)
Community
FreeOpen-source framework under BSL 1.1 license with self-hosted deployment
- ram
- 8 GB
- cores
- 4
- 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
Scale
Contact salesScalable tier for production deployments with cloud hosting options
- ram
- 24 TB
- cores
- 128
- nodes
- 40
- 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
Enterprise
Contact salesFully managed tier with advanced connectors and dedicated support
- 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
What Pathway does
The capabilities that matter for rag tools, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.
- 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
- ✓
Platform & deployment
Independently observed- CLI
- Web
- Cloud / SaaS
- Self-hosted
Integrations (21)
Independently observed- Kafka
- Apache Spark
- Amazon S3
- PostgreSQL
- Redpanda
- Logstash
- Slack
- Google Pub/Sub
- Microsoft Sharepoint
- Delta Lake
- Apache Iceberg
- Google BigQuery
- Elasticsearch
- QuestDB
- MQTT
- OpenAI
- Ollama
- Mistral
- LiteLLM
- Sentence Transformers
- Docling
Pathway alternatives
Other rag tools we track, ranked by the same independent score.
- RagieA managed service that automates document ingestion, parsing, and intelligent retrieval for AI applicationsmedium · 55%
- LightRAGlow · 16%
- Amazon Bedrock Knowledge BasesManaged retrieval-augmented generation service that connects AI applications to proprietary enterprise datamedium · 62%
- Ragaslow · 27%
- Contextual AIlow · 41%
- Kotaemonlow · 23%
Compare Pathway
Side by side against other rag tools, attribute by attribute, with a source on every value.
The Vioscale score: one lens on the evidence
Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for Pathway, not the verdict.
| Signal | Score | Weight | Contribution | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price level | 80 | 0.05 | 4.2 | ✓ |
| Capabilities | 87 | 0.05 | 4.2 | ✓ |
| Integrations | 71 | 0.04 | 2.9 | ✓ |
| Pricing transparency | 25 | 0.08 | 2.1 | ✓ |
| Reliability | 0 | 0.07 | 0.0 | - |
| Security posture | 5 | 0.07 | 0.0 | - |
Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.
All data & sourcesshow ↓
Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.
Features
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Capabilities | Open source, Multimodal rag, Hybrid retrieval, Llm provider agnostic, Managed ingestion pipeline, Embedding provider agnostic, Multi hop agentic retrieval | mediumsource · 2026-08-21 · 60% |
Integrations
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Count | 300 | mediumsource · 2026-08-21 · 60% |
Market
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Availability | HqCountry: US · PrimaryMarkets: … · AvailabilityScope: global · AvailableCountries: … · NotAvailableCountries: … | highsource · 2026-08-21 · 75% |
Pricing
Security
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Gdpr | Yes | highsource · 2026-08-21 · 75% |