# Cursor Agent SDK vs LangGraph

> LangGraph scores 70.6 (BB) to Cursor Agent SDK's 63.6 (B) for agent frameworks. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-langgraph
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-langgraph.md (~2,350 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-langgraph.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-langgraph.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-27

LangGraph scores 70.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Cursor Agent SDK's 63.6 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Cursor Agent SDK leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth. Both do agent frameworks.

- Cursor Agent SDK: grade B, 63.6/100, rank #443 of 1217. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cursor-agent-sdk.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cursor-agent-sdk.json
- LangGraph: grade BB, 70.6/100, rank #163 of 1217. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/langgraph.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/langgraph.json
- Best agent frameworks and SDKs: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/frameworks/index.md
- All 78 frameworks comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/frameworks/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Cursor Agent SDK (B)

Good for: Teams already on Cursor who want version-controlled agents for pull request review, triage and Slack, with evals in CI and one-command hosting.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 70
- Security & auth, 68 against 60

Also in its favour:
- No incidents deducted, where LangGraph loses 3 points for them

Watch for: Closed source under Cursor's terms, with no public repository, CI or issue tracker

### LangGraph (BB)

Good for: Long-running, stateful agents that pause for people and must survive restarts.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 75 against 45
- Schema & documentation, 89 against 82
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 90 against 74
- Transparency & trust, 79 against 70

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
- No key needed to call it
- Open source

Watch for: No MCP client of its own. LangChain's langchain.mcp is in beta


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Cursor Agent SDK | LangGraph | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 45 | 75 | LangGraph +30 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 89 | LangGraph +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 70 | Cursor Agent SDK +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 68 | 60 | Cursor Agent SDK +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 60 | LangGraph +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 90 | LangGraph +16 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 70 | 79 | LangGraph +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **63.6 · B** | **70.6 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Cursor Agent SDK | LangGraph |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Cursor | LangChain |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Your plan | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary. The package's LICENSE.md reads "© Anysphere Inc. All rights reserved", with use subject to Cursor's Terms of Service (updated 3 September 2026). No source repository is published | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-25 | 2026-09-21 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-03 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-29 | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | none | 42k stars, 2.3M npm/wk, 10.4M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Cursor Agent SDK.** An agent-as-code framework with typed tools, declared read and write effects that drive retries and dry runs, an approval gate per tool and evals that assert on tool calls. It's closed source, every model turn runs through Cursor's backend on a Cursor plan, local sandboxing is off by default, and the changelog has two entries.

**LangGraph.** Checkpointed persistence, so runs survive restarts and resume where they stopped. No MCP client of its own. LangChain's langchain.mcp is in beta.

## Before you call either

### Cursor Agent SDK

1. Install `@grok/agent-sdk`, not `@cursor/agent-sdk` from the launch post. That name answers 404 on npm
2. Set `local.sandbox` before a turn reads webhook payloads, pull request diffs or chat. Without it shell commands auto-approve with the host's credentials
3. Give every tool an `effect`. A tool without one counts as a write, runs once and is stubbed in dry runs
4. Start `agent-sdk serve` with `--bearer-token` on any shared host. `--allow-anonymous` admits every caller as one principal
5. Delete bot/hooks/memory.ts when sessions serve different people. The journal shares each turn's message and result with later turns

### LangGraph

1. Use a persistent checkpointer in production, not the in-memory one
2. Move from langchain-mcp-adapters to langchain.mcp, and expect a LangChainBetaWarning
3. Set LANGGRAPH_CLI_NO_ANALYTICS=1 on build machines
4. Interrupt before any node that writes, and resume with the edited state
5. Keep the checkpoint and SQLite packages current. Each had a high-severity advisory in late 2025

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Cursor Agent SDK or LangGraph?

LangGraph scores 70.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Cursor Agent SDK's 63.6 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Cursor Agent SDK leads on agent ergonomics and security & auth.

### Are Cursor Agent SDK and LangGraph open source?

No open-source release is listed for Cursor Agent SDK. LangGraph is open source (MIT).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-langgraph.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-langgraph.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "cursor-agent-sdk", "b": "langgraph"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare cursor-agent-sdk langgraph`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cursor-agent-sdk.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/langgraph.json

## Other comparisons with Cursor Agent SDK or LangGraph

- [AgentOS vs Cursor Agent SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentos-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.md)
- [AgentOS vs LangGraph](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agentos-vs-langgraph.md)
- [Agno vs Cursor Agent SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agno-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.md)
- [Agno vs LangGraph](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agno-vs-langgraph.md)
- [Claude Agent SDK vs Cursor Agent SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-agent-sdk-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.md)
- [Claude Agent SDK vs LangGraph](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/claude-agent-sdk-vs-langgraph.md)
- [CrewAI vs Cursor Agent SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-cursor-agent-sdk.md)
- [CrewAI vs LangGraph](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crewai-vs-langgraph.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs Docker Agent](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-docker-agent.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs Agent Development Kit (ADK)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-google-adk.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs guilds.run](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-guilds-run.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs Microsoft Agent Framework](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-microsoft-agent-framework.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs OpenAI Agents SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-openai-agents-sdk.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs Pydantic AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-pydantic-ai.md)
- [Cursor Agent SDK vs TradingAgents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cursor-agent-sdk-vs-tradingagents.md)
- [Docker Agent vs LangGraph](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/docker-agent-vs-langgraph.md)
- [Agent Development Kit (ADK) vs LangGraph](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-adk-vs-langgraph.md)
- [guilds.run vs LangGraph](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/guilds-run-vs-langgraph.md)
- [LangGraph vs Microsoft Agent Framework](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/langgraph-vs-microsoft-agent-framework.md)
- [LangGraph vs OpenAI Agents SDK](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/langgraph-vs-openai-agents-sdk.md)
- [LangGraph vs Pydantic AI](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/langgraph-vs-pydantic-ai.md)
- [LangGraph vs TradingAgents](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/langgraph-vs-tradingagents.md)

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