CrewAIvsMastra
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
CrewAI
CrewAI · Agent framework
OSSMCP
Panel
6.61 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 7.0
- Longevity
- 6.8
“The scaffold command is crewai create crew my_crew, the only place the word appears three times without a boat.”
Mastra
Mastra · Agent framework
OSSMCP
Panel
6.82 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.7
- Usefulness
- 6.8
- Cost
- 6.5
- Longevity
- 7.0
“Publishes two books on building agents and a weekly podcast, so the documentation now has documentation.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | CrewAI | Mastra |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent framework | Agent framework |
| Runs | local, cloud | local, cloud |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | No | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | No | No |
| Git operations | No | No |
| Browser control | YesMost crewai-tools web tools only scrape HTML, but StagehandTool drives a real browser with act, extract and observe primitives that click, type and fill forms. | Yes |
| Sandboxed execution | YesCodeInterpreterTool runs generated code in an isolated Docker container by default, and crewai-tools also ships E2B and Daytona sandbox tools; unsafe_mode=True opts out. | Yes |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, any LiteLLM provider | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, xAI, 40+ providers |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | YesAn Agent's LLM takes a base_url, so Ollama at http://localhost:11434 or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint set through OPENAI_API_BASE works. | 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 | Apache-2.0 (core) / Mastra Enterprise License (ee directories) |
| GitHub stars | 59,277 | 28,490 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | CrewAI | Mastra | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.0 | 7.3 | Mastra — Pick Mastra if your team writes TypeScript and already has a Next.js app to put the agent in; pick LangGraph if it writes Python or needs a graph you can inspect. |
| El Crítico | 6.3 | 6.5 | Mastra — The auth code sits in an ee directory under the Mastra Enterprise License, free for development and testing but licensed for production, so a real deployment's first need is the part that is not open. |
| El Profesor | 6.3 | 6.8 | Mastra — Agents iterate until the model emits a final answer or a stopping condition; workflows are an explicit graph of then, branch and parallel; suspend and resume persists state; no benchmark is published. |
| La Inversora | 6.5 | 7.0 | Mastra — Y Combinator W25, a Teams tier at $250 a month, a token gateway at market rate plus 5.5%, and $100 a month per project for a server that stays up; the acquirer is Vercel. |
| La Jefa | 6.0 | 6.5 | Mastra — The Starter tier keeps 100K observability events for 15 days, SSO arrives at the Teams tier, RBAC and audit logs at Enterprise with custom pricing, and support hours are 8 to 5 Pacific on weekdays. |
| El Hacker | 7.5 | 6.5 | CrewAI — MIT, uv tool install crewai, MCPServerAdapter in crewai_tools with streamable-http, and LiteLLM underneath so my Ollama box is a first-class provider; the hosted platform is optional. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.