head to head · open source
langchain vs agent-rules-books
langchain has 146,562 GitHub stars, 24,508 forks, 492 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agent-rules-books has 2,816 stars, 499 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. langchain leads on adoption by 5,105% (146,562 vs 2,816 stars). langchain is written in Python under MIT; agent-rules-books is written in various languages under MIT. langchain has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, agent-rules-books 18%. langchain was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| langchain | agent-rules-books | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 147K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | — |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 499 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick langchain if
- You weight community size — 147K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agent-rules-books if
- You want the agent-rules-books feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- You evaluated both and agent-rules-books fits your workflow better
About langchain
LangChain is an open source framework for building agents and LLM powered applications, written in Python and released under the MIT license. It lives in the AI and machine learning ecosystem, specifically among AI development platforms, and it works by chaining together interoperable components and third party integrations so that AI application development becomes simpler. The project describes itself as the agent engineering platform, and its abstractions are designed to keep applications working as the underlying technology evolves.
read the full langchain overview →
About agent-rules-books
agent rules books is an MIT licensed, tool agnostic collection of AGENTS.md rules and agent skills, distilled from classic software engineering books, that installs into AI coding agents such as Codex, Cursor and Claude Code to steer them toward better refactoring, architecture, domain driven design and code quality.
read the full agent-rules-books overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is langchain or agent-rules-books more popular?
langchain has 146,562 GitHub stars and agent-rules-books has 2,816. langchain has the larger community by that measure.
Are langchain and agent-rules-books free?
Both are open source. langchain is licensed under MIT and agent-rules-books under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between langchain and agent-rules-books?
langchain is written in Python and agent-rules-books in various languages. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, langchain or agent-rules-books?
Choose langchain if you want the larger community (146,562 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose agent-rules-books if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.