LangChain
The default starting point for agent development: no other framework matches its integration catalog, documentation volume or hiring-market familiarity. The catch is churn and depth — major versions have repeatedly rewritten core APIs, and once you need observability or managed deployment you are steered toward the paid LangSmith platform.
Pros
- Integrations for 1,000+ models, tools, vector stores and databases
- MIT license with a large contributor community
- LangGraph runtime adds persistence, rewind and human-in-the-loop control
- Python and JavaScript keep parity for most features
Cons
- History of breaking API changes between major versions
- Layers of abstraction complicate debugging versus direct SDK calls
- Production observability and deployment funnel into commercial LangSmith