I’ve been working with LangChain for building AI agents but I’m running into some issues with LangGraph’s complexity. The setup and deployment process seems overly complicated unless you use their cloud service. I recently discovered OpenAI’s new agent framework and I’m wondering if it might be a better option. Has anyone compared these two approaches? I’m looking for something that’s easier to implement and deploy locally without requiring a bunch of additional services. The learning curve for LangGraph feels pretty steep and I’m not sure if it’s worth the investment when there might be simpler alternatives out there. What are your thoughts on which framework is more practical for someone who just wants to build and deploy agents without too much overhead?
I tested both for a client project and went with a hybrid approach that worked really well. Swarm’s great for getting started quickly, but LangGraph’s state persistence becomes essential once your agents need to remember longer conversations or handle complex workflows. The key is figuring out what you actually need first. For quick prototypes and simple agent interactions, Swarm wins hands down - much better developer experience. But if you’re building anything with sophisticated routing or memory management, you’ll hit Swarm’s walls pretty fast. I’d start with Swarm to validate your concept, then move specific pieces to LangGraph only when you need the extra features. This saved me weeks of learning upfront and kept my options open for scaling later.
Switched from LangGraph to OpenAI Swarm two months back - wish I’d done it earlier. Swarm’s way more intuitive if you already know OpenAI’s API. LangGraph forces you to think graphs and state management, but Swarm lets you focus on actual agent logic and handoffs. Local deployment’s much better too - no extra infrastructure or vendor lock-in worries. Downside is Swarm’s still pretty new, so less community support and fewer integrations than LangGraph. But if you want agents running fast without the complexity headache, Swarm nails it. Docs are cleaner and examples actually work right away.