# Agent Development Kit (ADK) vs LlamaIndex Framework

> LlamaIndex Framework scores 70 (BB) to Agent Development Kit's 68.7 (B) for agent frameworks. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-adk-vs-llamaindex
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/google-adk-vs-llamaindex.md (~4,300 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: 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)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-07

LlamaIndex Framework scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against Agent Development Kit (ADK)'s 68.7 (B), and leads in 0 of 7 scored categories. Agent Development Kit (ADK) leads on reliability, agent ergonomics, security & auth and maintenance & community. Both do agent frameworks.

- Agent Development Kit (ADK): grade B, 68.7/100, rank #273 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-adk.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-adk.json
- LlamaIndex Framework: grade BB, 70/100, rank #217 of 1510. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/llamaindex.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/llamaindex.json
- Best agent frameworks and SDKs: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/frameworks/index.md
- All 171 frameworks comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/frameworks/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Agent Development Kit (ADK) (B)

Good 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 70
- Agent ergonomics, 80 against 73
- Security & auth, 92 against 74
- Maintenance & community, 90 against 69

Watch for: Six CVEs in 2026, three of them critical, one in tool confirmation itself

### LlamaIndex Framework (BB)

Good for: Python teams building retrieval-heavy agents over their own data, with many connectors.

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for: Core is 0.14.x, and minor versions such as 0.13 and 0.14 carried breaking changes


## Why the edge

### Maintenance & community: Agent Development Kit (ADK) +21

- Agent Development Kit (ADK) (90): 2.13.0 on 2026-10-23 (30). 15 Python releases in the 90 days from 3 August across the 1.x and 2.x lines, from 2.6.2 to 2.13.0, the newest 1.x being 1.39.1 on 2026-08-27 (20). 300 open issues and 261 open pull requests per the 1 October check, and we couldn't see reply times (15). Python is current, @google/adk is at 2.4.0 on npm, the Go module at v1.9.0 (tagged 15 October) and the Java artefact at 1.13.0 (21 October) (15). CI passes per the 1 October check, and 2.7.0 fixed zizmor findings in the workflows (10).
- LlamaIndex Framework (69): llama-index-core 0.14.25 on 21 September 2026, 46 days before this check (20). Two core changelog entries in the 90 days (19 August and 21 September), with integration packages and Workflows (2.24.1 to 2.26.1) publishing in between, so partial (12). 379 open issues and 1,291 open issues and pull requests on 6 November, with 241 issues opened in the 90 days to 3 November. Of the 50 newest, 28 had a comment and 3 were closed; a stale bot and an issue classifier run on the repository (12). Core, Workflows and integrations are current (15). CI and CodeQL passing on main and a stale-package policy that moves unmaintained integrations out of main (10). 20+12+12+15+10 = 69.

### Security & auth: Agent Development Kit (ADK) +18

- Agent Development Kit (ADK) (92): We found no usage telemetry in the docs or the Python source, and capturing message content in traces is opt-in (30). Tool confirmation for human approval, extended to workflow tool nodes in 2.11.0 and to any workflow node through `require_confirmation` in 2.12.0, the docs say to always pass tool_filter to McpToolset, 2.12.0 limits the mutating /dev and agent builder endpoints of adk web to local clients by default, and sandboxed code execution is recommended for model-written code (20). Before-tool callbacks, an after_tool_callback that screens tool output since 2.12.0, plugins, a Model Armor plugin, an optional ToolCallIntegrityPlugin since 2.11.0, and a safety page that covers indirect prompt injection through tool results (15). OpenTelemetry traces with Cloud Trace and about 20 third-party integrations (15). SECURITY.md routes reports to Google's g.co/vulnz with a one-day triage target, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November (the repository still has no SECURITY.md file and GitHub's security page answered 403). Google as CNA has published six 2026 CVEs with fixed versions, the newest on 23 and 28 October, but there are no repository advisories and no bounty is mentioned in the policy (12). Framework reading, so SOC 2 isn't scored.
- LlamaIndex Framework (74): Framework reading (telemetry defaults, approvals, guardrails, sandboxing). No telemetry found in llama-index-core (25). Human-in-the-loop events in Workflows and agents can wait for a person, but there's no per-tool approval primitive and CodeActAgent's executor is the developer's to supply (12). The threat model puts input validation on the application, with no prompt-injection guidance in the agent pages (5). Instrumentation events and callback handlers for tracing (14). A huntr bug bounty, GitHub private reporting and public advisories with fixed versions (18). 25+12+5+14+18 = 74.

### Reliability: Agent Development Kit (ADK) +10

- Agent Development Kit (ADK) (80): Official packages on PyPI (Requires-Python >=3.11 since 2.12.0, constraint files for 3.11 to 3.15) and npm (20). The continuous-integration workflow passes on main, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November (25). 300 open issues and 261 open pull requests, per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November (12). The changelog calls out breaking changes, but they keep shipping in minor releases of a post-1.0 package (2.6.0 on 2026-07-29 and 2.7.0 on 2026-08-13), 2.12.0 on 2026-10-13 dropped Python 3.10 with no line in its changelog, and 2.8.0 reverted an A2A guard that had broken every tool confirmation. On 8 October the changelog relabelled the 2.11.0 dev UI config change a bug fix and the 2.9.0 resumption changes behaviour changes. 2.13.0 (22 October) marks one more breaking change, the telemetry schema default, in a minor release (8). 2.12.0, past 1.0 (15).
- LlamaIndex Framework (70): Local-package reading. Official PyPI packages with Python 3.10 to below 4.0 (20). Public unit-test, type-check, lint, coverage and CodeQL workflows, with the type-check, lint and CodeQL runs on main passing on 3 November (25). 379 open issues and 1,291 open issues and pull requests on 6 November, with 241 issues opened in the 90 days to 3 November. Of the 50 newest, 28 had a comment and 3 were closed; a stale bot and an issue classifier run on the repository (12). A dated, generated changelog per package, but core is 0.x and minors such as 0.13 and 0.14 carried breaking changes (8). Core isn't 1.0; Workflows is at 2.x, so partial (5). 20+25+12+8+5 = 70.

### Agent ergonomics: Agent Development Kit (ADK) +7

- Agent Development Kit (ADK) (80): An agent with one MCP server is about 15 lines with the built-in McpToolset, and tool_filter limits which tools load, with no dynamic filtering or deferred loading that we saw (20). RunConfig caps model calls per run, and the context compression page documents token-based and sliding-window compaction through EventsCompactionConfig, plus context caching (20). No exception reference or MCP error handling documented (5). Invocations are resumable, model calls take retry options, and 2.11.0 adds an abort_signal for graceful cancellation (20). An agent needs a name, a model and an instruction, in Python, TypeScript, Go, Java or Kotlin (15).
- LlamaIndex Framework (73): Framework reading. MCP tools through a separate llama-index-tools-mcp package, with allowed tools selectable (18). Memory token limits, iteration caps and streaming events (16). Tool errors returned to the agent, with few typed errors (12). Workflow context serialises and resumes, and the DBOS package makes runs durable (16). Few required parameters, but OpenAI is the silent default for LLM and embeddings, Python here with a separate TypeScript edition (11). 18+16+12+16+11 = 73.

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Agent Development Kit (ADK) | LlamaIndex Framework | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 80 | 70 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 85 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +2 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 73 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +7 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 92 | 74 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +18 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 90 | 69 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +21 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 69 | 67 | Agent Development Kit (ADK) +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -12 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **68.7 · B** | **70 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Agent Development Kit (ADK) | LlamaIndex Framework |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | Agent framework |
| Vendor | Google | LlamaIndex |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-23 | 2026-09-21 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2026-08-24 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | not read yet |
| Popularity | 22k stars | 53k stars, 1.3M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (8) | none |

## How the scores have moved

### Agent Development Kit (ADK)

- -5.0 on 1 November 2026 (BB to B): negative event
- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- -1.1 on 17 October 2026: new evidence, negative event

### LlamaIndex Framework

No score change since it was listed.

## Verdicts

**Agent Development Kit (ADK).** Python, TypeScript, Go, Java and Kotlin, with tool confirmation and context compaction built in. Google has published six CVEs against ADK in 2026, three of them critical, one in tool confirmation itself, and minor 2.x releases keep carrying breaking changes.

**LlamaIndex Framework.** An MIT Python framework for retrieval and agents, with three agent types, multi-agent AgentWorkflow, resumable event-driven Workflows, MCP tools and a huntr bug bounty, and no telemetry found. Core is still 0.14 with breaking minors, OpenAI is the silent default, and approval and injection handling are left to the application.

## Before you call either

### Agent Development Kit (ADK)

1. Run Python 2.7.0 or later and Java 1.13.0 or later, which fix the adk web code-injection CVE, the tool-confirmation forgery and the Java dev server's cross-origin flaw
2. Always pass tool_filter to McpToolset
3. Pin a 2.x minor and read the changelog before each bump. 2.12.0 needs Python 3.11 or later, which its changelog doesn't say
4. Set EventsCompactionConfig on the App for long sessions so context doesn't grow without limit
5. Keep ADK Web off public interfaces
6. Set `ADK_TELEMETRY_SCHEMA_VERSION_OPT_IN=otel_semconv_1_36` on 2.13.0 or later if dashboards or alerts read the `call_llm` span

### LlamaIndex Framework

1. Set Settings.llm and Settings.embed_model explicitly so calls don't go to OpenAI by default
2. Install llama-index-tools-mcp for MCP tools and pass only the allowed tools the task needs
3. Use Workflow human-in-the-loop events before tools that write or send
4. Pin llama-index-core to a minor version, since minors have broken APIs
5. Upgrade llama-index-core to 0.13.0 or later to clear the 2025 advisories

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Agent Development Kit (ADK) or LlamaIndex Framework?

LlamaIndex Framework scores 70 (BB) on agent readiness against Agent Development Kit (ADK)'s 68.7 (B), and leads in 0 of 7 scored categories. Agent Development Kit (ADK) leads on reliability, agent ergonomics, security & auth and maintenance & community.

### Are Agent Development Kit (ADK) and LlamaIndex Framework open source?

Yes. Agent Development Kit (ADK) is open source (Apache-2.0). LlamaIndex Framework is open source (MIT).


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Agent Development Kit (ADK) or LlamaIndex Framework

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

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp