Deep AgentsvsStrands Agents
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Deep Agents
LangChain · Agent framework
OSSMCP
Panel
7.72 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.”
Strands Agents
Amazon Web Services · Agent framework
OSSMCP
Panel
7.82 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.3
- Usefulness
- 7.2
- Cost
- 8.7
- Longevity
- 8.0
“Built from systems already running inside Amazon, which is either an excellent pedigree or a warning, depending on your on-call history.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Deep Agents | Strands Agents |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent framework | Agent framework |
| Runs | local | 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 | YesShell access runs commands in whichever sandbox backend you configure. | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | No |
| Git operations | No | No |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | NoFilesystem and shell backends are pluggable between local, sandboxed and remote, but the README names no specific container runtime. | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | YesSub-agents take delegated tasks in isolated context windows. | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | any tool-calling LLM, frontier models, open-weight models, local models | Amazon Bedrock, Claude, GPT, Gemini, Ollama |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | Yes | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | free |
| 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 |
| GitHub stars | 29,898 | 8,614 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Deep Agents | Strands Agents | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 8.0 | 7.8 | 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 | 6.8 | 7.3 | Strands Agents — Command execution is a documented capability and no container isolation is listed, so an agent loop that goes wrong does so inside your own process with your own permissions. |
| El Profesor | 8.0 | 7.5 | 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 | 6.8 | 7.8 | Strands Agents — Nothing per seat, it runs unattended in our pipeline, and the maintainer is a vendor we already have a master agreement with, which removes the entire procurement step. |
| El Hacker | 8.8 | 8.5 | 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.