Microsoft AutoGen

What is Microsoft AutoGen?

AutoGen is Microsoft’s open-source framework for building multi-agent AI applications, systems where several LLM-powered agents converse, delegate and collaborate to complete a task, with or without a human in the loop. Released under the MIT licence and written primarily in Python (with a parallel .NET implementation), it pioneered the “agents talking to agents” pattern and remains one of the most-starred agent frameworks on GitHub (59,867 stars as of 2026-07-21) even though it is now in maintenance mode. Microsoft’s successor, the Microsoft Agent Framework, is no longer just an announced plan, it shipped as a production-ready 1.0 GA release on 2026-04-03, unifying AutoGen’s orchestration with Semantic Kernel’s enterprise plumbing under one supported stack for .NET and Python. The original AutoGen authors separately maintain a genuinely active community fork called AG2, which still controls the old PyPI packages.

What does Microsoft AutoGen do?

You define agents, each with a name, system instructions, an LLM client and optional tools, and AutoGen coordinates the messages that flow between them. Its layered design separates a low-level Core API (event-driven message passing with a local or distributed runtime) from a higher-level AgentChat API that ships ready-made patterns such as two-agent chat, group chat and round-robin teams. An Extensions layer adds model clients (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI and others) and tool integrations, and AutoGen Studio provides a no-code GUI for prototyping teams visually. Typical uses include code-writing-and-execution loops, research assistants that critique each other’s output, and orchestrated workflows where a planner agent hands subtasks to specialists. The framework is model-agnostic in principle but has first-class support for OpenAI and Azure. Because it is a library you import, you run it in your own environment and pay only the underlying model providers. Note that active feature development has moved on, the repository’s latest tagged release is python-v0.7.5 (published 2025-09-30), and its most recent commit (2026-04-06) only updated the README to redirect new users elsewhere. New capabilities now land in the Microsoft Agent Framework, already at 1.0 GA, or in the community-run AG2 fork, which is itself shipping commits as recently as this week.

Key features

• AgentChat multi-agent patterns: A high-level API with prebuilt patterns, two-agent chat, group chat and round-robin teams, for rapid multi-agent prototyping.
• Event-driven Core runtime: A low-level message-passing API with a local or distributed runtime for fine-grained control over how agents communicate.
• Extensions & model clients: Pluggable model clients (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI and others) and tool integrations that expand what agents can do.
• AutoGen Studio: A no-code GUI for building and testing multi-agent teams visually, without writing framework code.

What are Microsoft AutoGen's use cases?

• Multi-agent code generation: A writer agent produces code and an executor agent runs and critiques it in a loop until the task passes.
• Research & critique teams: Several specialist agents draft, review and refine an analysis, with a planner routing subtasks between them.

What does Microsoft AutoGen integrate with?

• OpenAI & Azure OpenAI model clients
• Python function/tool calling
• .NET / C# runtime
• AutoGen Studio (no-code GUI)
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) — the autogen-ext package connects agents to external MCP servers as a client (STDIO/SSE/Streamable HTTP)

Why use Microsoft AutoGen?

• Pioneered and popularised the conversational multi-agent pattern, with mature docs and a large community.
• MIT-licensed and free, run it in your own environment and pay only your model provider.
• Layered API lets you prototype fast in AgentChat, then drop into the Core runtime for control.
• Backed by Microsoft Research, with both Python and .NET implementations.

Pros & cons

Microsoft AutoGen pricing

• Open sourceFree

See current pricing on microsoft.github.io ↗Compare Microsoft AutoGen alternatives →

Microsoft AutoGen review

AutoGen is the framework that popularised the “agents conversing with agents” model, and it remains a clean, well-documented and genuinely free way to prototype multi-agent systems in Python or .NET. Its layered design is a real strength: you can start in the high-level AgentChat API and drop into the Core runtime when you need fine-grained control over message passing. The catch is strategic, not technical, and it has hardened since AutoGen’s own SEED write-up: Microsoft’s successor, the Microsoft Agent Framework, is no longer just announced, it reached a production-ready 1.0 GA on 2026-04-03 and is the live recommended path for new projects, while the original authors’ AG2 fork remains genuinely active in parallel (shipping commits within the last week) and controls the old PyPI packages. AutoGen itself hasn’t tagged a release since September 2025. That three-way split is a real, current risk for anyone building something they must maintain for years, and multi-agent loops can be token-heavy and hard to make deterministic. Pick AutoGen today to learn the patterns or extend an existing AutoGen codebase; if you are starting fresh for production, evaluate the Microsoft Agent Framework or AG2 first.

The framework that defined multi-agent conversations, now feature-frozen with its successor, Microsoft Agent Framework, already at 1.0 GA (April 2026); learn from AutoGen, but build new production work on the successor or the actively-maintained AG2 fork.

Frequently asked questions