Vercel AI SDK
Free open source TypeScript toolkit from Vercel for building AI apps and agents across many model providers.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yesStars 27.3knpm a week 34M
DSPy alternatives
7 tools you can use instead of DSPy, ranked by live GitHub stars and npm downloads. Vercel AI SDK, LangChain and CrewAI are the most used. Stats updated 5 hours ago.
When DSPy is not a good fit
DSPy is an open source Python framework for building AI systems by describing tasks as structured signatures instead of hand-written prompts. It started at Stanford NLP and is released under the MIT license. It requires Python 3.10 or later and installs with pip install -U dspy.
It is a weaker choice for:
- Non-Python projects
- Quick demos where writing one prompt is faster than defining signatures and a metric
- Teams that want a hosted product with a vendor to call
The alternatives
Most used first.
View Vercel AI SDK
LangChain
Open source framework for building applications with language models, paired with the LangSmith platform.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $39 a seat a month for LangSmith Plus, plus usage-based compute and storageOpen source yesStars 148knpm a week 3.7M
CrewAI
MIT-licensed Python framework for multi-agent workflows, with a paid platform for deployment.
Pricing Open sourcePaid from Enterprise: custom quoteOpen source yesStars 59.7k
LlamaIndex
Open source data framework for connecting language models to your own data, plus a paid parsing platform.
Pricing FreemiumPaid from $50 a month for the LlamaParse Starter planOpen source yesStars 52.5knpm a week 159k
Mastra
TypeScript framework for AI agents and workflows, Apache 2.0 licensed, with a managed platform.
Pricing Open sourcePaid from $250 a month for TeamsOpen source yesStars 28.8knpm a week 2.3M
LangGraph
Low-level orchestration framework from LangChain for long-running, stateful agents.
Pricing Open sourcePaid from $39 per seat a month for LangSmith PlusOpen source yesStars 43.2k
Haystack
Open source Python framework from deepset for building LLM applications, RAG pipelines and agents.
Pricing Open sourceOpen source yes
DSPy and its alternatives, side by side
| Tool | Pricing | Free plan | Paid from | Open source | GitHub stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DSPy | Open source | Yes: free and open source | Not listed | Yes, MIT | None |
| Vercel AI SDK | Open source | The library is free and open source. You pay the model providers you call. | Not listed | Yes, Apache-2.0 | 27.3k |
| LangChain | Freemium | Yes: the LangChain framework is free and open source; LangSmith has a free Developer tier with up to 5,000 base traces a month | $39 a seat a month for LangSmith Plus, plus usage-based compute and storage | Yes, MIT | 148k |
| CrewAI | Open source | The framework is free and open source. The hosted Basic plan is $0 a month with 50 executions a month. | Enterprise: custom quote | Yes, MIT | 59.7k |
| LlamaIndex | Freemium | Yes: the LlamaIndex framework is free and open source; LlamaParse has a free tier with 10,000 credits | $50 a month for the LlamaParse Starter plan | Yes, MIT | 52.5k |
| Mastra | Open source | The self-hosted framework is free. The managed Starter plan is $0 a month with 100K events and 24 CPU hours included. | $250 a month for Teams | Yes, Apache-2.0 (core), Mastra Enterprise License (ee directories) | 28.8k |
| LangGraph | Open source | The framework is free and open source. LangSmith has a Developer plan at $0 per seat a month, with up to 5k base traces a month. | $39 per seat a month for LangSmith Plus | Yes, MIT | 43.2k |
| Haystack | Open source | Yes: the framework is free and open source | Not listed | Yes, Apache-2.0 | None |
Pricing facts come from each tool's official pricing page, with the checked date on the tool's own page.
Questions
What is the most popular alternative to DSPy?
By GitHub stars, Vercel AI SDK is the most used alternative to DSPy listed on ScratchDB, with 27.3k stars.
Which DSPy alternatives are open source?
Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, CrewAI, LlamaIndex, Mastra, LangGraph and Haystack are open source.
Which DSPy alternatives have a free plan?
LangChain, LlamaIndex and Haystack have a free plan. The table on this page shows what each one includes.