Both have their place, but think about your long-term plans first. I jumped from OpenAI’s SDK to LangGraph after six months because we kept hitting walls with complex agent interactions.
OpenAI’s biggest problem? You can’t see what’s happening when stuff breaks. Their abstraction makes debugging a nightmare, especially with multi-step conversations. LangGraph’s state management and node setup lets you actually see what’s going on at each step.
LangGraph crushes it for external integrations. We’re hooked into three APIs and two custom models - would’ve been hell with OpenAI’s rigid setup. Yeah, there’s a learning curve, but the flexibility is worth it once you move past basic use cases.
Don’t forget about cost. LangGraph lets you pick the right model for each task. OpenAI pushes you toward their models everywhere. We’re saving real money now that we’ve been running it for a few months.