Agno vs LangChain (and the pain of real-world agent frameworks)

I’ve been knee-deep in agent frameworks for a while. I started with LangChain because it’s popular, full-featured, and everyone talks about it. And yeah, getting that “hello world” example to run feels great.

But then I tried turning that into something real—connecting memory, tools, parallel flows—and suddenly I was sinking hours into debugging the framework itself.

That line hit home. I then tried Agno, and its simplicity felt refreshing:

• Minimal, composable blocks
• Clean JSON outputs that actually help with debugging
• No visual workflows that look pretty but offer zero clarity

Real-world frustration vs. developer joy

Here’s what I discovered in my journey:

• LangChain: Powerful, yes—but sometimes too powerful. You wrestle with abstractions, concurrency bugs, and cryptic errors instead of building your agent logic.

  “Man the level of debugging I've had to do … it really drove me nuts.”

• Agno: Leaner, more predictable. It doesn’t try to solve every problem for you, but for simple-to-medium pipelines, it’s way more enjoyable to work with.

Code: Same goal, different feels

LangChain:

from langchain.chains import RetrievalQA
from langchain.chat_models import ChatOpenAI
from langchain.vectorstores import FAISS
 
retriever = FAISS.load_local("my_index").as_retriever()
llm = ChatOpenAI()
qa = RetrievalQA.from_chain_type(llm=llm, retriever=retriever, chain_type="stuff")
 
print(qa.run("What is LangChain?"))
 

Agno:

from agno import Agent
from agno.tools import VectorRetriever
from agno.llms import OpenAI 
 
agent = Agent(llm=OpenAI(), tools=[VectorRetriever("my_index")])
print(agent.run("What is Agno?"))
 

Both work—but Agno gets you there with fewer distractions.

So what do I do now? LangChain: Keep it on the shelf—for when I need its deep integrations, memory layers, or enterprise-grade tooling.

Agno: My everyday companion—for fast prototyping, straightforward flows, and when I just want to get work done.

Final thoughts I don’t think of one as strictly better than the other—it's all about trade-offs and what you value more today. Do you want:

ecosystem, flexibility, and breadth → LangChain

clarity, speed, and sanity → Agno

For me, Agno is where I land most days. It’s lean, predictable, and doesn’t get in the way.

Thank you for reading this and I hope you liked it!