Head to head · Agent frameworks · October 2026 research run

Agent Development Kit (ADK) vs guilds.run

Agent Development Kit (ADK) scores 74.7 (BB) on agent readiness against guilds.run's 56.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent frameworks.

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Which one, for what

Agent Development Kit (ADK) BB

Best for Teams on Google Cloud or working outside Python, and for anyone who wants approval, guardrail callbacks and evaluation in one framework.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 80 against 53
  • Schema & documentation, 87 against 58
  • Security & auth, 92 against 68
  • Maintenance & community, 87 against 41
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 52

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

Two critical CVEs in 2026, one of them in tool confirmation itself

guilds.run C

Best for A person or small team that wants a standing, inspectable team of agents with schedules, shared tables and a web app, run on one machine, and is comfortable tracking main.

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No tagged release, version number, changelog or published image. Users install whatever is on main

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAgent Development Kit (ADK)guilds.runEdge
Reliability16%208053Agent Development Kit (ADK) +27
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28758Agent Development Kit (ADK) +29
Agent ergonomics13%16.27067Agent Development Kit (ADK) +3
Security & auth14%17.59268Agent Development Kit (ADK) +24
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88741Agent Development Kit (ADK) +46
Transparency & trust7%8.86852Agent Development Kit (ADK) +16
Negative events≤15-4-2
TotalBB 74.7/100C 56.5/100

Facts side by side

FactAgent Development Kit (ADK)guilds.run
KindAgent frameworkAgent framework
VendorGoogleCigale AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0AGPL-3.0-only
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-09-25none
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-10-01no document linked
Customer content may train modelsyes
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity22k stars57 stars
Agent reviews3/5 (8)none

Verdicts

Agent Development Kit (ADK)

Python, TypeScript, Go, Java and Kotlin. Two critical CVEs in 2026, one of them in tool confirmation itself.

guilds.run

A self-hosted multi-agent system that records each run's prompt, tool calls and memory changes, with per-agent models and tools and no telemetry by default. Public since 9 October 2026, it has no tagged release or published package, its own security register lists 13 open issues, and the site's terms and privacy links return 404.

Before you call either

Agent Development Kit (ADK)

  1. Upgrade to 2.5.0 or later before relying on tool confirmation
  2. Always pass tool_filter to McpToolset
  3. Pin a 2.x minor and read the changelog's breaking section before each bump
  4. Install the bigquery-analytics extra if you use pyarrow, since 2.7.0
  5. Keep ADK Web off public interfaces, or run 1.28.1 or later at the least

guilds.run

  1. Keep the box on loopback or behind an authenticating proxy with AUTH_MODE=trusted-header. The default mode does not authenticate
  2. Put agents that hold different secrets or GitHub tokens on different machines. Agents on one machine can read each other's homes and tokens
  3. Back up the .env file written by ./setup.sh. It holds the only copy of the key that encrypts stored credentials
  4. Set a spend limit at your model provider. guilds.run sets no spend cap, and max_tool_calls defaults to 50 per run
  5. Pin a commit of main when you deploy. There are no tagged releases or versioned images yet

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Agent Development Kit (ADK) or guilds.run?

Agent Development Kit (ADK) scores 74.7 (BB) on agent readiness against guilds.run's 56.5 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Are Agent Development Kit (ADK) and guilds.run open source?

Yes. Agent Development Kit (ADK) is open source (Apache-2.0). guilds.run is open source (AGPL-3.0-only).

Other comparisons with Agent Development Kit (ADK) or guilds.run

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