LangChain vs LangSmith
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
LangChain is the stronger AI pick in AI Agents: it has a visibility score of 10.4 versus 3 for LangSmith, and ranks ahead in 33% of the answers that name both.
Choose LangChain if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (10.4 vs 3)
- You need a self-hosted or on-premises option
- Stateful multi-agent orchestration via state graphs
- Strong open-source adoption with large download numbers
Choose LangSmith if…
- You need SOC 2 Type II or HIPAA or GDPR or ISO 27001 (Engine feature) coverage
- strong production observability
- tracing, debugging and response evaluation
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | LangChain | LangSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 10.4% | 3% |
| Change vs last week | New | New |
| Rank in AI Agents | #12 | #31 |
| Share of voice | 2.7% | 0.9% |
| Mentions this run | 18 | 6 |
| Positive in AI answers | 17% | 17% |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
LangChain 0pp · LangSmith 0pp over 0 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
LangChain leads on 3 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
3 engine answers name both brands
| Prompt | Engine | LangChain | LangSmith |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best AI agent platform for startups | ChatGPT | #9 | #4 |
| Which AI agent platform has transparent pricing? | ChatGPT | #3 | #2 |
| Official website of the top AI agent platform vendors | Perplexity | #12 | #14 |
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | LangChain | LangSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Per seat | — |
| Entry price | Free; paid from $39 per seat / mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Deployment | Cloud (SaaS), hybrid (SaaS control plane with self-hosted data plane), or self-hosted in the customer's VPC | Cloud, Bring Your Own Cloud, and Self-hosted |
| Compliance | — | SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27001 (Engine feature) |
| Support | Community forum, Support portal, Email support, Slack | — |
| Founded | 2023 | — |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, CA, United States | San Francisco, California |
| Employees | 201–500 | — |
| Funding | Series B, led by IVP | Series B |
| Best for | Teams building agents that need control over models, context, memory and deployment, and the ability to test, govern and improve them in production | — |
Plans side by side
LangChain
LangSmith
Pricing not available.
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
LangChain
- Stateful multi-agent orchestration via state graphs
- Strong open-source adoption with large download numbers
- Suited to enterprise agent loops
- Heavy developer framework that requires coding
LangSmith
- strong production observability
- tracing, debugging and response evaluation
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 100%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “LangChain vs LangSmith”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/langchain-vs-langsmith, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.