Head to head · Agent frameworks · October 2026 research run

Agno vs smolagents

Agno scores 70.9 (BB) on agent readiness against smolagents's 58.7 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. smolagents leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent frameworks.

Best agent frameworks and SDKs · All 171 frameworks comparisons

Which one, for what

Agno BB

Best for Python teams that want agents, teams and workflows plus a self-hosted server with REST, MCP, approvals and scheduling in one package.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 83 against 64
  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 81
  • Agent ergonomics, 76 against 68
  • Maintenance & community, 86 against 34
  • Transparency & trust, 84 against 65

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

Usage telemetry is on by default and sends session, run and agent identifiers unhashed. Prompts and outputs are not sent

smolagents C

Best for Small Python projects and research that want code-writing agents with minimal abstraction.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 50

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

No release since 1.26.0 on 29 May 2026, and few commits to main since August

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Maintenance & community Agno +52

Agno 86

3.1.12, tagged 29 October 2026 (30). 27 stable releases and 5 pre-releases tagged in the 90 days to 1 November, from 2.8.7 on 5 August to 3.1.12 (20). Bug reports were usually answered within days on 8 October, when 867 issues and 968 pull requests were open and issues were opened nearly three times as fast as they were closed, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 1 November (14). The Python package is current (15). CI runs lint, types and tests with pinned development tools. No Dependabot configuration file is in the repository (7).

smolagents 34

v1.26.0 on 29 May 2026, 161 days before this check (10). No release in the 90 days to 6 November (0). 416 open issues and 1,045 open issues and pull requests on 6 November, with 144 issues opened in the 90 days to 3 November. Of the 50 newest, 26 had a comment and 1 was closed. Two 2026 CVE records say the vendor didn't respond to the reporter, and seven commits reached main from 8 August to 6 November (6). Python only, and the package is the current one (10). CI with actions pinned to commit SHAs and Dependabot for actions (8). 10+0+6+10+8 = 34.

Reliability Agno +19

Agno 83

Official PyPI package with Python 3.9 or later stated (20). Public CI runs Ruff, mypy and the unit tests in five groups, and of the 12 latest runs on main on 8 October, 10 passed and 2 were cancelled, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 1 November (25). 867 open issues, 171 of them labelled bug and 227 older than six months, with 287 opened and 105 closed in the 30 days to 8 October, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 1 November (12). Majors 2.0 and 3.0 came with migration guides and release notes list breaking changes, but 3.1.0, a minor, shipped a breaking filesystem table re-key (11). Version 3.1.12 with the Production/Stable classifier (15). Local-software reading.

smolagents 64

Local-package reading. Official PyPI package with Python 3.10 or newer (20). A public tests workflow runs pytest on Python 3.10 and 3.12 for pushes and pull requests; whether main passes wasn't read (15). 416 open issues and 1,045 open issues and pull requests on 6 November, with 144 issues opened in the 90 days to 3 November. Of the 50 newest, 26 had a comment and 1 was closed. Two 2026 CVE records say the vendor didn't respond to the reporter, and seven commits reached main from 8 August to 6 November (6). Release notes on GitHub tags but no changelog file, and the remote WasmExecutor was removed in a minor release (8). 1.0 since 31 December 2024 (15). 20+15+6+8+15 = 64.

Transparency & trust Agno +19

Agno 84

Apache 2.0 (30). The telemetry page lists the fields sent and says identifiers are not hashed, and the pricing page says the control plane holds no copy of customer data. The terms and privacy pages render only with JavaScript and were not read, and no retention period for telemetry was found (15). Migration guides for 2.0 and 3.0 and migration notices on what was removed, with no written deprecation policy found (10). Telemetry is disclosed in the README and docs with an opt-out, though the environment variable does not cover AgentOS or evals (18).

smolagents 65

Apache-2.0 (30). The library stores nothing itself; the default model sends prompts to Hugging Face's inference providers, which the docs show (20). Breaking removals such as WasmExecutor shipped in minor releases, without a written deprecation policy (5). No telemetry, though no page states it (12). 30+20+5+12 = 67.

Payments & pricing smolagents +10

Agno 50

No payment protocol (0). Self-hosted rule, with the paid option scored. The control plane has public plan prices, Free at $0 and Pro at $150 a month, with Enterprise by quote (10). The package installs with no card (20) and runs with no Agno account (20).

smolagents 60

Self-hosted rule. Free Apache-2.0 package with nothing to buy from the project (20 + 20 + 20). No payment protocol (0). 0+20+20+20 = 60.

Schema & documentation Agno +9

Agno 90

A class reference under docs.agno.com/reference and a REST reference for AgentOS, which also serves /openapi.json (25). llms.txt with 3,985 lines, llms-full.txt, a Markdown twin of each page and a docs MCP server (10). Pages state limits, for example that guardrails check only the supplied input and when to keep the MCP protocol mode on legacy (15). Pydantic-typed classes and tool signatures, with a py.typed marker (13). Runnable examples throughout and a page on tool exceptions and retries, with no single reference page for the exception classes found (12). Dated changelog and release notes per version (15). Framework reading.

smolagents 81

Framework reading. A typed Python API with reference pages for agents, models, tools and executors (22). llms.txt and Markdown pages on huggingface.co (10). The docs say when to use CodeAgent or ToolCallingAgent and when a sandbox is needed (17). Tools declare typed inputs in a schema dictionary or from a decorated function (12). Many runnable examples; error classes exist but aren't catalogued (10). Versions tagged with release notes, no changelog file (10). 22+10+17+12+10+10 = 81.

Agent ergonomics Agno +8

Agno 76

An agent with an MCP server is about ten lines through MCPTools, with include_tools, exclude_tools and tool_name_prefix (22). tool_call_limit exists but defaults to None, and sessions, history and compression are configurable (14). A typed exception hierarchy, with RetryAgentRun and StopAgentRun to steer the loop from a tool (16). Runs continue by run ID after a pause and AgentOS has a durable queue, which is off by default (16). Few required parameters, Python only (8).

smolagents 68

Framework reading. MCPClient loads an MCP server's tools in a few lines (20). max_steps, planning intervals and final_answer_checks bound a run (16). Errors from tools and code go back to the model as observations (14). No built-in retry, idempotency or resume beyond replaying memory (8). Few required parameters and many providers, Python only, and the default model needs a Hugging Face token (10). 20+16+14+8+10 = 68.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAgnosmolagentsEdge
Reliability16%208364Agno +19
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.29081Agno +9
Agent ergonomics13%16.27668Agno +8
Security & auth14%17.56466smolagents +2
Payments & pricing10%12.55060smolagents +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88634Agno +52
Transparency & trust7%8.88465Agno +19
Negative events≤15-5-6
TotalBB 70.9/100C 58.7/100

Facts side by side

FactAgnosmolagents
KindAgent frameworkAgent framework
VendorAgno Inc.Hugging Face
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthAPI keyNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-292026-05-29
Terms last updatedcouldn't be read2022-09-15
Privacy policy last updatedcouldn't be read2023-03-28
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be readnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be readyes
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be readnot found in the text
Popularity43k stars, 476k PyPI/wk30k stars, 171k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.3/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Agno

An Apache 2.0 Python agent framework at 3.1.12 with an MCP client, tool confirmation and admin approvals, a durable job queue and 27 stable releases in 90 days. Usage telemetry is on by default with unhashed identifiers, and 3.1.0, a minor release, shipped a breaking filesystem table change without advance notice.

smolagents

A compact Python library for code-writing and tool-calling agents, with MCP tools, any model provider and remote sandboxes through E2B, Docker, Modal or Blaxel. The newest release is 1.26.0 of 29 May 2026, a critical remote-executor RCE took about eight weeks to fix, and the local executor isn't a security boundary.

Before you call either

Agno

  1. Set AGNO_TELEMETRY=false before the first run, and pass telemetry=False to AgentOS and to each eval, which ignore the variable
  2. Configure JWT_VERIFICATION_KEY with AgentOS authorisation switched on, or OS_SECURITY_KEY, before exposing AgentOS. With neither set, REST and MCP routes take no credential
  3. Mark tools that write with requires_confirmation, and resume with continue_run once every requirement is resolved
  4. Set tool_call_limit on agents. The default is None
  5. Install extras for what you use, such as agno[mcp] for MCPTools and agno[os,mcp] for AgentOS with its MCP server

smolagents

  1. Run CodeAgent with executor_type set to e2b, docker, modal or blaxel whenever the model or its inputs aren't trusted
  2. Use smolagents 1.24.0 or later to get the remote-executor deserialisation fix
  3. Set max_steps and final_answer_checks so a run stops on its own
  4. Pass structured_output explicitly to MCPClient to avoid the default-change warning
  5. Pin the version, since minor releases have removed APIs

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Agno or smolagents?

Agno scores 70.9 (BB) on agent readiness against smolagents's 58.7 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. smolagents leads on payments & pricing.

Are Agno and smolagents open source?

Yes. Agno is open source (Apache-2.0). smolagents is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Agno or smolagents

Machine-readable

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