Comparison

DSPy vs OpenAI Agents SDK

A like-for-like, spec-level comparison. Both entries are verified against their docs and repo.

DSPy

Declarative, programmable prompt programming from Stanford.

  • + Compiles and optimizes prompts instead of hand-writing them
  • + Strong for repeatable, measurable prompt engineering
  • − Different mental model from typical agent frameworks
  • − Smaller ecosystem of tool integrations

OpenAI Agents SDK

OpenAI's lightweight agents SDK (Swarm successor).

  • + Minimal and readable abstraction
  • + First-class OpenAI tracing and guardrails
  • − OpenAI models first
  • − Young ecosystem
Spec DSPy OpenAI Agents SDK
Role Agent framework Agent framework
Tags agent-framework, library, persona-solo-builder, persona-platform-engineer agent-framework, library, orchestration, persona-solo-builder, persona-platform-engineer
License MIT MIT
Open source Yes Yes
Self-hostable Yes Yes
MCP support No Yes
Pricing free free
Price Free Free
Usage cost BYOK Included
Models byok gpt
Languages python python
GitHub stars 35.8k 27.6k
Last activity 2026-07-02 2026-07-04