Claude Agent SDKvsLangGraph
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
6.93 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.”
LangGraph
LangChain · Agent framework
OSSMCP
Panel
7.65 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.7
- Usefulness
- 7.3
- Cost
- 7.3
- Longevity
- 8.0
“You do not need LangChain to use LangGraph, says the LangChain documentation.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Claude Agent SDK | LangGraph |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent framework | Agent framework |
| Runs | local, cloud | local, cloud |
| 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 | Yes |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | No |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | No |
| Git operations | Yes | No |
| Browser control | No | YesNot in LangGraph itself: browser control comes from LangChain's own PlayWrightBrowserToolkit (Click, Navigate, ExtractText and related tools) in langchain-community, bound as agent tools. |
| Sandboxed execution | No | NoThe first-party langchain-sandbox package gave LangGraph agents a Pyodide/Deno PyodideSandboxTool but was archived in January 2026 with production use discouraged, so nothing current ships. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Claude | any LangChain chat model, OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama |
| 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 | 42,591 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Claude Agent SDK | LangGraph | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 7.8 | LangGraph — Pick LangGraph if your agent has to stop, wait for a human, and resume a day later without losing state; pick CrewAI if you want roles and less plumbing. |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 7.3 | LangGraph — The core is standalone, but local models arrive through LangChain's ChatOllama and MCP through langchain[mcp], so the dependency you were told you did not need is the one that ships the tools. |
| El Profesor | 7.0 | 7.5 | LangGraph — Agents are graphs mixing deterministic and model-driven nodes, execution is durable and resumes from persisted state, and memory is split into short-term working and long-term cross-session tiers. |
| La Inversora | 8.0 | 7.8 | Claude Agent SDK — Renaming the Claude Code SDK to the Claude Agent SDK is Anthropic saying the product is the loop, not the CLI, and the upsell above it is already named: Managed Agents. |
| La Jefa | 7.3 | 7.0 | 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 | 8.3 | LangGraph — MIT, pip install -U langgraph, a checkpointer interface I can implement against my own Postgres, Ollama through ChatOllama, MCP tools with one extra install, and the hosted platform is optional. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.