Side-by-Side Comparison
When to choose LangChain
- ▸Your workflow is primarily linear — input, retrieval, LLM call, output — without cycles or conditional branching.
- ▸You need JavaScript/TypeScript support that LangGraph doesn't offer.
- ▸You're building RAG applications, chatbots, or simple tool-using agents without complex state management.
- ▸Your team is already proficient in LangChain and the added complexity of graphs isn't justified.
- ▸Rapid prototyping is a priority — LangChain's LCEL (LangChain Expression Language) chains are faster to write for simple use cases.
When to choose LangGraph
- ▸Your agent needs to loop, backtrack, or take conditional paths based on intermediate results — LangGraph handles cycles natively.
- ▸You need persistent state across steps, with checkpointing and the ability to resume interrupted workflows.
- ▸You require human-in-the-loop patterns where execution pauses for human review before proceeding.
- ▸You're building a complex multi-agent system where each agent is a node and control flow between them matters.
- ▸You need fine-grained control over how state is passed, updated, and persisted between agent steps.
Find LangChain and LangGraph Agencies
Ask prospective LangGraph agencies to walk you through their state schema design process — how they model state, decide on checkpointing backends, and handle failures mid-graph. Weak agencies treat LangGraph as just a fancier chain; strong AI agent agencies use it to build genuinely resilient, resumable workflows that hold up in production.
Which has more agencies?
In our directory, there are currently 163 LangChain agencies and 50 LangGraph agencies. LangChain leads the directory — reflecting its longer history and broader ecosystem adoption. However, LangGraph agency numbers are growing as the framework matures.
Bottom line
LangGraph is what you reach for when LangChain's sequential chain model no longer fits your use case. If your agent needs to loop, maintain rich state, or coordinate complex multi-step workflows with conditional branching, LangGraph is the natural evolution. For most RAG and simple agent use cases, plain LangChain is simpler and faster to ship.