Claude Agent SDKvsDeep Agents
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Claude Agent SDK
Anthropic · Agent framework
OSSMCP
Panel
6.92 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.2
- Usefulness
- 7.5
- Cost
- 6.2
- Longevity
- 6.7
“Lets you ship Claude Code inside your product, on the condition that you never call it Claude Code.”
Deep Agents
LangChain · Agent framework
OSSMCP
Panel
7.73 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.3
- Usefulness
- 7.5
- Cost
- 8.3
- Longevity
- 7.7
“It ships in Python and TypeScript, so your team can keep arguing about the language and still lose the argument to the same harness.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Claude Agent SDK | Deep Agents |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent framework | Agent framework |
| Runs | local, cloud | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | 200k tokens, 1M on select models | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | YesShell access runs commands in whichever sandbox backend you configure. |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | No |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | NoFilesystem and shell backends are pluggable between local, sandboxed and remote, but the README names no specific container runtime. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | YesSub-agents take delegated tasks in isolated context windows. |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Claude | any tool-calling LLM, frontier models, open-weight models, local models |
| Bring your own model | No | Yes |
| Local models | No | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT (SDK); use governed by Anthropic Commercial Terms | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 8,199 | 29,898 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Claude Agent SDK | Deep Agents | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 8.0 | Deep Agents — Pick this when you want a working agent today and the freedom to replace one piece later; pick a smaller library if you would rather understand every line first. |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 6.8 | Deep Agents — Shell access runs in a sandbox of your choosing and the documentation names no container runtime, so the isolation is a backend you must supply and can forget to. |
| El Profesor | 7.0 | 8.0 | Deep Agents — Context management is explicit: long threads are summarised and tool output is offloaded to disk rather than carried, which treats the window as a budget instead of a container. |
| La Inversora | 8.0 | 8.0 | no preference |
| La Jefa | 7.3 | 6.8 | Claude Agent SDK — As a dependency it rides the Bedrock, Vertex AI or Foundry contract we already have, costs nothing per seat, forbids consumer subscriptions, and comes with branding rules legal will want to read. |
| El Hacker | 5.3 | 8.8 | Deep Agents — MIT, `uv add deepagents`, any MCP server becomes a tool, and it is model-agnostic down to open-weight models on my own machine. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.