# Agno vs smolagents (slim)

> Agno scores 70.9 (BB) to smolagents's 58.7 (C) for agent frameworks. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agno-vs-smolagents.md (~4,100 tokens) · this version ~2,180 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agno-vs-smolagents.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agno-vs-smolagents
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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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.

- Agno: BB 70.9, rank #178 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/agno.min.md
- smolagents: C 58.7, rank #735 of 1486 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/smolagents.min.md
- Agno, good 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 Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better.
- smolagents, good for Small Python projects and research that want code-writing agents with minimal abstraction. Ahead on Payments & pricing, 60 against 50. Also No key needed to call it.

| Category | Agno | smolagents |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 83 | 64 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 90 | 81 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 76 | 68 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 64 | 66 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 50 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 86 | 34 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 84 | 65 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Agno | smolagents |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Agno Inc. | Hugging Face |
| Auth | API key | None |
| Last release | 2026-10-29 | 2026-05-29 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | 2022-09-15 |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2023-03-28 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 43k stars, 476k PyPI/wk | 30k stars, 171k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- 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.)