Comparison

OpenAI Agents SDK vs Smolagents

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

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

Smolagents

Hugging Face's minimalist code-writing agents.

+ Minimal and easy to reason about
+ Code-as-action avoids JSON tool schemas
− Less orchestration than LangGraph
− Executing agent code needs sandboxing

Spec	OpenAI Agents SDK	Smolagents
Category	framework	framework
License	MIT	Apache-2.0
Open source	Yes	Yes
Self-hostable	Yes	Yes
MCP support	Yes	Yes
Pricing	free	free
Starting price	BYOK usage cost	BYOK usage cost
Models	gpt	claude, gpt, gemini, local, byok
Languages	python	python
GitHub stars	27.4k	28.0k
Last activity	2026-06-24	2026-06-23