Agent Lightning vs LangGraph

A side-by-side look at pricing, capabilities, pros, cons, and our editorial scores.

	Agent Lightning Agents	LangGraph Agents
Tagline	Microsoft's open-source trainer that fine-tunes AI agents with RL and prompt optimization, framework-agnostic.	Stateful, graph-based agent orchestration from LangChain.
Category	Agents	Agents
Pricing	Free· Free, MIT-licensed open source	Freemium· Free open-source; LangGraph Platform paid
Model	Multi-model	BYO (Claude / GPT / open)
Editorial score	—	8.8 / 10
Use cases	agent-trainingreinforcement-learningprompt-optimizationfine-tuningmulti-agent-systems	stateful agentshuman-in-loopproduction
Pros	Framework-agnostic — works with LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, OpenAI Agents SDK and more Combines RL, prompt optimization, and SFT in one trainer Minimal code changes to integrate with existing agent stacks Backed by Microsoft Research with active development and Discord support MIT-licensed and fully open source	Reliable, debuggable agent graphs Built-in persistence + HITL Production-grade Tight LangSmith integration
Cons	Requires ML engineering chops — not a no-code product No managed/hosted service; bring your own compute Docs assume familiarity with RL and agent internals Young project; APIs and recipes still evolving	Steeper learning curve than CrewAI Verbose to set up
Website	microsoft.github.io	www.langchain.com

Pick Agent Lightning if

✅ Framework-agnostic — works with LangChain, AutoGen, CrewAI, OpenAI Agents SDK and more
✅ Combines RL, prompt optimization, and SFT in one trainer
✅ Minimal code changes to integrate with existing agent stacks
✅ Backed by Microsoft Research with active development and Discord support

Pick LangGraph if