Agent alternatives
Agent by Convex costs Free (OSS) and is open source. If you need something cheaper, open source, self-hosted or simply different, here are 10 alternatives that do the same job, ranked by how widely they are used, with the differences that matter.
10 Agent alternatives, by popularity
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A framework for building LLM applications and agents from composable parts: model integrations, tools, retrievers and prebuilt agent abstractions. Available for Python and JavaScript.
- Works with local models
- More widely used (Gid Score 78 vs 38)
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A low-level orchestration framework for building stateful agents as graphs, with durable execution, persistence and human-in-the-loop steps. Available for Python and JavaScript.
- Works with local models
- More widely used (Gid Score 72 vs 38)
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Vercel's TypeScript toolkit for building AI applications and agents, with one API across model providers and UI helpers for streaming.
- Works with local models
- More widely used (Gid Score 66 vs 38)
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Anthropic's SDK that exposes the agent loop, tools and context management behind Claude Code, for building custom agents in Python and TypeScript.
- More widely used (Gid Score 64 vs 38)
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An open-source SDK from AWS for building and controlling agents in Python and TypeScript.
- Works with local models
- More widely used (Gid Score 63 vs 38)
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OpenAI's lightweight framework for multi-agent workflows, with handoffs, guardrails, sessions and tracing. Available for Python and TypeScript. Per its PyPI page it is provider-agnostic, supporting the OpenAI Responses and Chat Completions APIs as well as 100+ other LLMs.
- More widely used (Gid Score 60 vs 38)
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A TypeScript framework for building agents and AI workflows, with memory, evals, retrieval and observability built in.
- Works with local models
- More widely used (Gid Score 57 vs 38)
- Growing fast: usage up 32% in 30 days
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A Python framework and runtime for building multi-agent systems with memory, knowledge and tools. Formerly known as Phidata.
- Works with local models
- More widely used (Gid Score 56 vs 38)
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A batteries-included agent harness built on LangGraph, with planning, a virtual file system and sub-agents for long-running tasks.
- Works with local models
- More widely used (Gid Score 56 vs 38)
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A Python agent framework from the Pydantic team, built around type-safe structured outputs, dependency injection and model-agnostic tool calling.
- Works with local models
- More widely used (Gid Score 53 vs 38)
Agent vs alternatives at a glance
| Agent | Price | Free to start | Open source | MCP | Local models | Gid Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agent | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ? | ? | 38 |
| LangChain | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 78 |
| LangGraph | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 72 |
| AI SDK | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 66 |
| Claude Agent SDK | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ? | 64 |
| Strands Agents | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 63 |
| OpenAI Agents SDK | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ? | 60 |
| Mastra | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 57 |
| Agno | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 56 |
| Deep Agents | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 56 |
| Pydantic AI | Free (OSS) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 53 |
Prices from the vendors' pricing pages; features from official docs (“?” means not documented). Full feature comparison · All prices
How teams use these tools
How Bayer Crop Science built a multi-agent decision engine on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
Bayer Crop Science built the Agentic Decision Engine, a multi-agent natural language interface over its Connected Decision Engine for ML workflows, hosted on Amazon Bedrock AgentC…
As reported by AWS, ADE resolves about 80 percent of user questions without an engineer in the loop.
Run LangChain's Open Deep Research multi-agent pipeline locally
LangChain's open-source deep research agent, built on LangGraph, runs research sub-agents in parallel, compresses what they find and writes a final report. It works with many mode…
On Deep Research Bench, the default GPT-4.1 configuration scored 0.4309 and the GPT-5 configuration 0.4943.
Build a CI-health monitoring agent with the Claude Agent SDK and GitHub MCP
In this Anthropic cookbook notebook, an agent gets the official GitHub MCP server and is told to look over recent CI runs. It reports failing jobs, flaky patterns and recommended …
A status summary of recent CI runs and what triggered them.
FAQ
What is the best alternative to Agent?
By usage, the closest alternative is LangChain, followed by LangGraph, AI SDK, Claude Agent SDK.
Is there a free alternative to Agent?
Yes. LangChain is free to start.
Is there an open-source alternative to Agent?
Yes. LangChain is open source.
How do these Agent alternatives compare on price?
LangChain: Free (OSS); LangGraph: Free (OSS); AI SDK: Free (OSS); Claude Agent SDK: Free (OSS); Strands Agents: Free (OSS); OpenAI Agents SDK: Free (OSS).
Agent: pricing, features and stats · All agent frameworks and SDKs · Find the right agent in 4 questions