head to head · open source
langchain vs promptflow
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars, 25,031 forks, 492 open issues and last shipped yesterday. promptflow has 11,260 stars, 1,125 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. langchain leads on adoption by 1,222% (148,892 vs 11,260 stars). langchain is written in Python under MIT; promptflow is written in Python under MIT. langchain has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, promptflow 10%. langchain was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, chatgpt), 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 | promptflow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 149K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 promptflow if
- You want the promptflow feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and promptflow 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 promptflow
Prompt flow Welcome to join us to make prompt flow better by participating discussions, opening issues, submitting PRs. Prompt flow is a suite of development tools designed to streamline the end to end development cycle of LLM based AI applications, from ideation, prototyping, testing, evaluation to production deployment and monitoring. It makes prompt engineering much easier and enables you to build LLM apps with production quality. With prompt flow, you will be able to: Create and iteratively develop flow Create executable flows that link LLMs, prompts, Python code and other tools together. Debug and iterate…
read the full promptflow overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is langchain or promptflow more popular?
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars and promptflow has 11,260. langchain has the larger community by that measure.
Are langchain and promptflow free?
Both are open source. langchain is licensed under MIT and promptflow under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between langchain and promptflow?
langchain is written in Python and promptflow 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 promptflow?
Choose langchain if you want the larger community (148,892 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose promptflow if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.