OpenAI Agents SDKvsStrands Agents
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
OpenAI Agents SDK
OpenAI · Agent framework
OSSMCP
Panel
7.13 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.2
- Usefulness
- 7.0
- Cost
- 7.2
- Longevity
- 7.0
“Billed as the production-ready upgrade of Swarm, which tells you what Swarm was.”
Strands Agents
Amazon Web Services · Agent framework
OSSMCP
Panel
7.81 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 | OpenAI Agents SDK | Strands Agents |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | No |
| Git operations | No | No |
| Browser control | Yes | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | GPT, any LiteLLM-supported model | 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 | 29,799 | 8,614 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | OpenAI Agents SDK | Strands Agents | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.0 | 7.8 | Strands Agents — Pick Strands if your team writes both Python and TypeScript and wants one agent SDK for both; pick LangGraph when a run must pause for a day and resume where it stopped. |
| 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 | 6.5 | 7.5 | Strands Agents — It is model-driven by design: the model selects tools rather than following an authored graph, with hooks and steering as the documented intervention points. |
| La Inversora | 7.5 | 8.0 | Strands Agents — The SDK is free because the inference is not: it comes from a cloud provider whose own model service is the first-listed provider, and that is the entire business model. |
| La Jefa | 7.3 | 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 | 7.5 | 8.5 | Strands Agents — Apache-2.0, installable from pip or npm, an MCP client and server on both sides, and Ollama listed as a first-class provider rather than a community afterthought. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.