Agent Development Kit (ADK) vs LangGraph
A side-by-side comparison of Agent Development Kit (ADK) and LangGraph, two Orchestration tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
Agent Development Kit (ADK)
OrchestrationOpen-source, code-first framework for building and deploying multi-agent systems.
View Agent Development Kit (ADK)LangGraph
OrchestrationGraph-based agent orchestration. Stateful loops with checkpoints.
View LangGraphAt a glance
| Attribute | Agent Development Kit (ADK) | LangGraph |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Orchestration | Orchestration |
| Pricing | FREE | FREE |
| License | Open source | Open source |
| Deployment | — | — |
| Platforms | API, CLI | API, CLI |
| Model support | Model-agnostic | Model-agnostic |
| Vendor (differs) | LangChain |
The honest brief
Agent Development Kit (ADK)
Native bidirectional audio/video streaming and the same engine behind Google's own production agents set it apart from text-only agent frameworks.
- Backed by Google, code-first design
- Model- and deployment-agnostic
- Composes agents into hierarchies
- Built-in evaluation and dev UI
- Multi-language: Python, Java, Go, TS
- Optimized for Gemini and Google Cloud
- Younger than LangChain / LlamaIndex
- Enterprise features lean on Vertex AI
LangGraph
Durable checkpointed state-graph with human-in-the-loop — long agent runs pause and resume, unlike one-shot chains.
- Durable checkpointed state
- Low-level graph control
- Debuggable long-running agents
- Runs in production at major firms
- Steeper learning curve
- More boilerplate than chains
- Tied to LangChain conventions