CrewAI vs OpenAI Agents SDK
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
OpenAI Agents SDK is the stronger AI pick in AI Agents: it has a visibility score of 31.4 versus 17.5 for CrewAI, and ranks ahead in 74% of the answers that name both.
Choose CrewAI if…
- You need a self-hosted or on-premises option
- You need SOC 2 Type II coverage
- Fastest path to a working multi-agent demo
- Strong for complex multi-agent and role-based workflows
Choose OpenAI Agents SDK if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (31.4 vs 17.5)
- AI answers describe it more positively (45% vs 43% positive)
- You need SOC 2 Type 2 or ISO/IEC 27001:2022 or ISO/IEC 27701:2019 or CSA STAR Level 1 coverage
- Widely adopted platform for enterprise and developer agents
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | CrewAI | OpenAI Agents SDK |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 17.5% | 31.4% |
| Change vs last week | New | New |
| Rank in AI Agents | #7 | #2 |
| Share of voice | 4.9% | 5.8% |
| Mentions this run | 30 | 38 |
| Positive in AI answers | 43% | 45% |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
CrewAI 0pp · OpenAI Agents SDK 0pp over 0 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
OpenAI Agents SDK leads on 3 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
19 engine answers name both brands
| Prompt | Engine | CrewAI | OpenAI Agents SDK |
|---|---|---|---|
| What features matter most in an AI agent platform? | AI Mode | #4 | #1 |
| What are the best AI Agents tools in 2026? | ChatGPT | #3 | #1 |
| What are the best AI Agents tools in 2026? | AI Mode | #2 | #5 |
| What are the best AI Agents tools in 2026? | Perplexity | #4 | #9 |
| Top AI agent platform options for B2B SaaS companies | ChatGPT | #7 | #1 |
| Top AI agent platform options for B2B SaaS companies | AI Mode | #8 | #6 |
| Best AI agent platform for startups | ChatGPT | #3 | #5 |
| Best AI agent platform for startups | AI Mode | #4 | #3 |
| Compare the leading AI Agents platforms | ChatGPT | #10 | #1 |
| Compare the leading AI Agents platforms | Perplexity | #9 | #6 |
| Alternatives to the most popular AI agent platform | ChatGPT | #8 | #2 |
| Alternatives to the most popular AI agent platform | Perplexity | #4 | #1 |
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | CrewAI | OpenAI Agents SDK |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Flat tiers | — |
| Entry price | Contact sales | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Deployment | CrewAI cloud, customer VPC on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, or fully on-premises (AMP Factory). | Runs inside the customer's own application; the customer controls deployment, storage and approvals. |
| Integrations | 1000+ | — |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type II | SOC 2 Type 2, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, CSA STAR Level 1 |
| Support | Community forum, Dedicated support with Slack/Teams channel, Support contact, On-site support | — |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA | 1455 and 1515 Third Street, San Francisco |
| Employees | 11–50 | — |
| Funding | Series B | $122 billion round closed March 31, 2026 at $852 billion post-money, anchored by Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank · $180000M raised |
| Best for | Enabling business and technical teams to build agents while giving platform teams the control to govern them. | Teams already building on OpenAI models that want a lightweight framework to write their own agent logic. |
Plans side by side
OpenAI Agents SDK
Pricing not available.
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
CrewAI
- Fastest path to a working multi-agent demo
- Strong for complex multi-agent and role-based workflows
- Free open-source Python framework
- Good for quickly prototyping multi-agent systems
- Industry standard for pro-code multi-agent orchestration
- Better suited to developers than nontechnical users
OpenAI Agents SDK
- Widely adopted platform for enterprise and developer agents
- Streamlined framework for native GPT integration and function calling
- Good for rapid prototyping
- Access to foundational models and agent workflows via the OpenAI Platform
- A framework rather than a complete enterprise automation suite
- Requires separate payment for OpenAI model API usage
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 100%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “CrewAI vs OpenAI Agents SDK”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/crewai-vs-openai-agents-sdk, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.