LangChain vs CrewAI
Two multi-agent frameworks, compared on what each one says about itself and on what its repository actually did last month — measured on the same night, not preferred.
Pick by the shape of the problem, then check each one's freshness score, because that is the part that moves. Choose CrewAI when the work looks like a team of specialists: it splits the model in two on purpose — Crews "optimize for autonomy and collaborative intelligence with role-based AI agents" and Flows "build event-driven automations that combine precise workflow control" — and it is explicit that it is standalone, "a standalone Python framework with its own primitives for agents, tasks, crews". Choose LangChain when integration surface matters more than opinion: it is positioned to absorb change, "future-proofing decisions as the underlying technology evolves", and it is the only one of the two with a full published ecosystem — Deep Agents, LangGraph, LangSmith, a JS/TS library. Both are MIT, both are company-owned, and both sell something beside the framework rather than inside it: LangSmith for LangChain, the AMP Suite for CrewAI. And here is the thing neither publishes: neither README says one word about whether the project is still being maintained. That is normal — four of the five frameworks tracked on this page's siblings say nothing either — and it is exactly why StillShipping scores both from the GitHub API every night — published at /is/langchain-maintained and /is/crewai-maintained — rather than reading a repository's front page.
2 compared · 6 criteria, identical for every column · every competitor figure read off that company's own page · last verified 2026-08-15
agent and spec frameworks compared on the same 6 criteria
| LangChain | CrewAI | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is, in its own words | A framework for building agents and LLM applications "The agent engineering platform. LangChain is a framework for building agents and LLM-powered applications. It helps you chain together interoperable components and third-party integrations." | A multi-agent automation framework "Fast and flexible multi-agent automation framework. CrewAI is an open-source Python framework with high-level abstractions and low-level APIs for building production-ready multi-agent workflows." |
| What its README says about its own maintenance | Not published The README carries no statement about the project's maintenance status, no deprecation notice and no successor. What it does carry is routing advice within its own ecosystem — "just getting started? check out deep agents" and, for orchestration, LangGraph. Read on the repository's own front page on 14 August 2026. | Not published No maintenance statement, deprecation notice or successor anywhere on the README. The closest thing to a health signal it publishes is adoption — "with over 100,000 developers certified through our community courses" — which is a different claim. Read on the repository's own front page on 14 August 2026. |
| How you install it | uv add langchain The quickstart is three lines: install, `init_chat_model`, invoke. A JS/TS equivalent, langchain.js, is published separately. | uv pip install crewai "Q: How do I install CrewAI? A: Install CrewAI with uv: uv pip install crewai. For additional tools, use: uv pip install 'crewai[tools]'." A `crewai create crew` CLI scaffolds a project. |
| Licence | MIT Shown in the repository's own file navigation alongside its code of conduct, contributing guide and security policy. | MIT "CrewAI is released under the MIT License." Stated in the README as well as in the repository's file navigation. |
| Who publishes it | langchain-ai A company-owned repository, which is the arrangement four of these five share and the one that most affects what happens to the project if the company's priorities move. | crewAIInc Company-owned, with a commercial suite published from the same README — so the framework and the product it feeds are maintained by the same organisation. |
| What it sells alongside | LangSmith, and a deployment platform "LangSmith - agent evals, observability, and debugging for LLM apps" and "LangSmith Deployment - deploy and scale agents with a purpose-built platform". The framework is MIT; the paid surface sits beside it rather than inside it. | CrewAI AMP Suite "For organizations that need a commercial control plane around CrewAI, CrewAI AMP Suite adds managed deployment, observability, governance, security, and enterprise support." One part, the Crew Control Plane, is offered free to try. |
“Not published” means that company does not state the figure on the page cited at the foot of this page. It is not a claim that no such figure exists. A company that publishes no limit most likely has none — but “most likely” is not a fact, and this table prints what was read rather than what was inferred.
- What its README says about its own maintenance — whether the project's front page tells a reader that it is still being developed, has stopped, or has a successor — as distinct from what its commit graph implies
Is LangChain or CrewAI better for multi-agent systems?
CrewAI is the more opinionated of the two about multi-agent specifically, and it says so: it is a "fast and flexible multi-agent automation framework" whose two primitives are Crews, for role-based autonomous collaboration, and Flows, for event-driven control. LangChain's core is broader — "a framework for building agents and LLM-powered applications" — and its answer for orchestration is a separate package, LangGraph, described on its own README as the framework "for building controllable agent workflows". So the honest comparison for multi-agent work is CrewAI against LangGraph rather than against LangChain, and the choice comes down to whether you want role-based crews or a low-level graph.
Are LangChain and CrewAI still actively maintained?
Neither repository publishes an answer to that question, which is why it needs measuring rather than reading. Neither README carries a maintenance statement, a deprecation notice or a successor — unlike AutoGen, which states plainly that it "is now in maintenance mode" and "will not receive new features or enhancements". StillShipping reads those figures from the GitHub API every night — commit recency, release cadence, issue response time and maintainer count — and publishes them at /is/langchain-maintained and /is/crewai-maintained, both scored on the same night so the numbers are comparable rather than merely present.
Are they free?
Both frameworks are MIT-licensed and free to use, and both companies sell something beside them. CrewAI publishes the AMP Suite "for organizations that need a commercial control plane around CrewAI", adding managed deployment, observability, governance, security and enterprise support, with the Crew Control Plane free to try. LangChain publishes LangSmith for "agent evals, observability, and debugging" and a separate deployment platform. In both cases the paid product is operational tooling around the framework rather than a gate on the framework itself — which matters for licensing and matters for maintenance, because it is the paid product that funds the free one.
How do you install each one?
Both are Python, both install with uv, and both publish a one-line quickstart. LangChain: `uv add langchain`, then `init_chat_model` and invoke. CrewAI: `uv pip install crewai`, with `uv pip install 'crewai[tools]'` for the optional agent tooling and a `crewai create crew` CLI that scaffolds a project from YAML configuration. LangChain additionally publishes langchain.js as a JS/TS equivalent; CrewAI is Python only.
What does StillShipping measure that a comparison article does not?
Whether the project is still moving, on the night you read the page. A comparison article is a snapshot of the day it was written, and the thing most likely to have changed since is not the API — it is whether anyone is still merging. Every tool on this site is rescored nightly from the GitHub API on commit recency, release cadence, issue response time and maintainer count, and each tool's own page says which of those moved. That is the axis a listicle structurally cannot cover, and it is the one that decides whether a framework you adopt today is a liability in eighteen months.
When each of these is the right pick
StillShipping does not sell any of these and has nothing to gain from which one you choose — it scores them. Each case below is the one that option genuinely wins.
- LangChain — You want the largest integration surface in this market and you expect the underlying models to keep changing under you. LangChain's own framing is exactly that — it helps you "chain together interoperable components and third-party integrations to simplify AI application development - all while future-proofing decisions as the underlying technology evolves" — and it is the only one of the five that publishes a whole ecosystem around the core: Deep Agents for common patterns, LangGraph for low-level orchestration, LangSmith for evals and observability, and a JS/TS library.
- CrewAI — The shape of your problem is a team of specialists rather than a chain of calls, and you want one framework that does both autonomy and control without a second dependency. CrewAI splits those explicitly — "CrewAI Crews: optimize for autonomy and collaborative intelligence with role-based AI agents" and "CrewAI Flows: build event-driven automations that combine precise workflow control, single LLM calls, and native support for Crews". It is also the only one of the five that states it is standalone: "CrewAI is a standalone Python framework with its own primitives for agents, tasks, crews."
What was checked, and when
Prices and limits move, and a page quoting a stale one is worth less than a page quoting none. Every source is printed here so a reader can check it against the day they are reading this, and a job re-fetches each of these URLs on a schedule and fails when a figure above no longer appears on the page it came from.
- LangChain — github.com/langchain-ai/langchain — What it is, in its own words, What its README says about its own maintenance, How you install it, Licence, Who publishes it, What it sells alongside. Read 2026-08-15.
- CrewAI — github.com/crewAIInc/crewAI — What it is, in its own words, What its README says about its own maintenance, How you install it, Licence, Who publishes it, What it sells alongside. Read 2026-08-15.
Last verified 2026-08-15. https://stillshipping.kynth.studio/langchain-vs-crewai
