head to head · open source
langchain vs mini-swe-agent
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars, 25,031 forks, 492 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mini-swe-agent has 9,038 stars, 1,265 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. langchain leads on adoption by 1,547% (148,892 vs 9,038 stars). langchain is written in Python under MIT; mini-swe-agent is written in Python under MIT. langchain has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, mini-swe-agent 14%. langchain was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | mini-swe-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 149K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick langchain if
- You weight community size — 149K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mini-swe-agent if
- You want the mini-swe-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and mini-swe-agent fits your workflow better
About langchain
The agent engineering platform. LangChain is a framework for building agents and LLM powered applications. It helps you chain together interoperable components and third party integrations to simplify AI application development — all while future proofing decisions as the underlying technology evolves. [!TIP] Just getting started? Check out Deep Agents — a higher level package built on LangChain for agents that have built in capabilities for common usage patterns such as planning, subagents, file system usage, and more. Quickstart If you're looking for more advanced customization or agent orchestration, check…
read the full langchain overview →
About mini-swe-agent
The minimal AI software engineering agent 📣 mini swe agent now powers Ramp SWE Bench 📣 mini swe agent beats Claude Code and Codex on DeepSWE 📣 Run mini swe agent on our new & extremely challenging benchmark, ProgramBench 📣 New tutorial on building minimal AI agents [!WARNING] This is mini swe agent v2 . Read the migration guide. For the previous version, check out the v1 branch. In 2024, we built SWE bench & SWE agent and helped kickstart the coding agent revolution. We now ask: What if our agent was 100x simpler, and still worked nearly as well? mini is Widely adopted : Used by Meta, NVIDIA, Essential AI…
read the full mini-swe-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is langchain or mini-swe-agent more popular?
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars and mini-swe-agent has 9,038. langchain has the larger community by that measure.
Are langchain and mini-swe-agent free?
Both are open source. langchain is licensed under MIT and mini-swe-agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between langchain and mini-swe-agent?
langchain is written in Python and mini-swe-agent in Python. 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 mini-swe-agent?
Choose langchain if you want the larger community (148,892 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose mini-swe-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.