Head to head · Agent frameworks · October 2026 research run

LangGraph vs smolagents

LangGraph scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against smolagents's 58.7 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. smolagents leads on security & auth. Both do agent frameworks.

Best agent frameworks and SDKs · All 171 frameworks comparisons

Which one, for what

LangGraph B

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

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 75 against 64
  • Schema & documentation, 89 against 81
  • Maintenance & community, 90 against 34
  • Transparency & trust, 81 against 65

Watch for

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

smolagents C

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

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 66 against 60

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 LangGraph +56

LangGraph 90

1.2.19 tagged on 2026-10-30 (30). Nine releases of the core package in the 90 days from 3 August, 1.2.11 (11 August) to 1.2.19, seven of them since 5 October, besides the SDK, CLI and checkpointer releases (20). 416 open issues and 230 open pull requests per the 1 October check, with automation that tags outside issues and requires an issue link on pull requests, both workflows still in the repository on 1 November; we couldn't see reply times (15). langgraph 1.2.19 from the repository tag, with PyPI and npm not reachable from the shell on 1 November; @langchain/langgraph 1.4.18 per the 1 October check (15). CI and CodeQL workflows present, pass state per the 1 October check (10).

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.

Transparency & trust LangGraph +16

LangGraph 81

MIT (30). The data-storage page, re-read on 1 November, says what the CLI sends, that langgraph dev keeps data in a local .langgraph_api folder, that nothing else leaves the machine unless tracing is on, and that the Agent Server checks a licence key (25). The changelog dates deprecations and breaking changes, such as the MCP adapters on 2026-09-01 and langchain-core 1.7.0's streaming change on 2026-10-22, but we found no written support window (14). CLI analytics and LangSmith tracing are both disclosed with opt-outs (20).

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.

Reliability LangGraph +11

LangGraph 75

Official packages on PyPI (Requires-Python >=3.10 in the pyproject at 1.2.19) and npm (node >=18, per the 1 October check) (20). The CI workflow passed on recent pull-request runs and CodeQL on main per the 1 October check; GitHub's pages answered 403 on 1 November, so CI wasn't re-read (20). 416 open issues and 230 open pull requests per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November (8). Seven 1.2.x patch releases since 1.2.12 with conventional commit messages, but 1.2.18 (26 October) carries a commit marked breaking (feat(langgraph)!, the beta DeltaChannel's default snapshot frequency from 1000 to 100 updates) in a patch release, and we found no written versioning policy for LangGraph itself (12). 1.2.19, classed 5 - Production/Stable (15).

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.

Schema & documentation LangGraph +8

LangGraph 89

A typed graph API with a reference site (25). llms.txt at docs.langchain.com, per the listing's earlier check (10). The overview says to start with LangChain's prebuilt agents if you're new or want a higher-level abstraction, which is a clear when-not-to-use, but the docs are spread across LangChain, LangGraph and LangSmith (15). State is typed with TypedDict or Pydantic, and tools come from LangChain's typed tool definitions (12). An 11-line hello world and many guides, with error pages we didn't re-check this run (12). Dated changelog (15).

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.

Security & auth smolagents +6

LangGraph 60

The library sends nothing according to the data-storage page, re-read on 1 November. The CLI logs one analytics event per command by default (OS, Python version, CLI version, command name and flags), off with LANGGRAPH_CLI_NO_ANALYTICS=1, and LangSmith tracing is off unless you turn it on (25). Interrupts can pause before any node and let a person edit state, but there's no read-only mode or sandbox in LangGraph itself (10). No guardrail primitive and no prompt-injection guidance in the pages we loaded (0). LangSmith tracing, opt-in (10). LangChain's organisation SECURITY.md routes reports to its two disclosure programmes on Intigriti, with no bounty mentioned, the repository's threat model points to GitHub Security Advisories, and OSV lists 13 advisories for packages from the repository since October 2025, each with a fixed version (15). Framework reading, so SOC 2 isn't scored.

smolagents 66

Framework reading (telemetry defaults, approvals, guardrails, sandboxing). No telemetry found in the source (25). No human approval hook beyond step callbacks; the local executor restricts imports but the guide says it isn't a security tool, and isolation needs a remote executor (10). The secure execution guide covers LLM-generated code risks, without prompt-injection guidance for tool output (7). OpenTelemetry tracing through OpenInference and run inspection (12). SECURITY.md with private reporting and CVE credit, and the remote-executor RCE was fixed in public, but two 2026 CVE records say the vendor didn't respond (12). 25+10+7+12+12 = 66.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLangGraphsmolagentsEdge
Reliability16%207564LangGraph +11
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28981LangGraph +8
Agent ergonomics13%16.27068LangGraph +2
Security & auth14%17.56066smolagents +6
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89034LangGraph +56
Transparency & trust7%8.88165LangGraph +16
Negative events≤15-4-6
TotalB 69.8/100C 58.7/100

Facts side by side

FactLangGraphsmolagents
KindAgent frameworkAgent framework
VendorLangChainHugging Face
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITApache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-302026-05-29
Terms last updatedno document linked2022-09-15
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2023-03-28
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot read yetyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot read yetnot found in the text
Popularity42k stars, 2.3M npm/wk, 10.4M PyPI/wk30k stars, 171k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews3.5/5 (2)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

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.

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

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 langgraph-checkpoint, the SQLite checkpointer and langgraph-sdk current. The SDK's custom-auth decorators ignored actions before 0.4.4 (October 2026)

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, LangGraph or smolagents?

LangGraph scores 69.8 (B) on agent readiness against smolagents's 58.7 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. smolagents leads on security & auth.

Are LangGraph and smolagents open source?

Yes. LangGraph is open source (MIT). smolagents is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with LangGraph or smolagents

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