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Curated collection

Open-Source AI Agent Frameworks

Open-source frameworks for building AI agents on code you can read, fork and self-host: from the largest ecosystems to the newest TypeScript-native entrant.

Browse the 12 agents ↓Selection criteria

12 of the 16 agent frameworks in our index carry a clean, unrestricted open-source license on the code you would actually run. No source-available carve-out. No separate commercial license required to get the controls a production team needs while self-hosting. A framework is not a product you sign into; it is code that lands in your own repository, so the license attached to it matters more here than it does for a hosted agent.

At a glance

agents
12
curated for this set
Free to start
12 of 12
a free or freemium entry tier
Public API
12 of 12
every entry checked
Publish a price
12 of 12
an anchor price on their own page
What this collection covers

Two of the 16 do not clear that bar, and both are open at the core. Mastra's framework is Apache-2.0 and free to self-host, but the RBAC, SSO and IAM controls a production team needs sit behind a separate Enterprise Self-Hosted tier, billed as a flat annual fee on top of the open code. Claude Agent SDK's Python and TypeScript wrapper packages carry an MIT license, but Anthropic's own docs state that using the SDK as a whole is governed by its commercial Terms of Service, so the license on the wrapper does not cover what you are actually agreeing to when you run it.

This is not the same list as our [open-source AI agent tools collection](/collections/open-source-ai-agent-tools/), which spans coding agents, voice agents and agent platforms too, not just the tools you build an agent with (every entry here also appears there). It is also not the same as our [ranking of all 16 frameworks](/best-ai-agent-frameworks/), which scores the full set on capability and includes Mastra and Claude Agent SDK alongside the 12 open ones here.

Among these 12: LangChain remains the largest and most integration-heavy framework in the group; Microsoft ships two that clear this bar, AutoGen and its newer successor, Agent Framework; and AgentsKit is the newest and least proven, four months old with an MIT core and its hosted layer, AgentsKit OS, still enterprise-only early access. Every one of them lets you point the framework at any model provider you choose and keep running if the vendor ever disappears, a guarantee a closed SDK cannot make.

How these 12 agents were picked

A framework earns a place here only if it belongs to this site's frameworks category and its entire self-hostable codebase carries a clean, unrestricted OSI-style license: MIT, Apache-2.0, GPL-3.0-or-later or AGPLv3, with no source-available carve-out and no separate commercial license gating the controls a production deployment needs. This is the same bar our open-source AI agent tools collection applies, narrowed to one category. Verified against each framework's own listing research (license type, pricing tiers and FAQ text), not a vendor's marketing claim of "open source."

The 12 agents on this shelf

Browse wider than this shelf

A collection is one cut through the index. These are the full categories the agents above sit in, unfiltered.

All Agent frameworks All Agent platforms All Coding agents Every collection

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What we re-checked, what got added, and one number from the index. Tuesdays.

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