5 tools you can use instead of Vercel AI SDK, ranked by live GitHub stars and npm downloads. LangChain, LlamaIndex and CrewAI are the most used. Stats updated 5 hours ago.
The Vercel AI SDK, also called AI SDK, is a free open source TypeScript library for building AI-powered applications and agents. It is made by Vercel and the Next.js team and gives one API for text generation, structured output, tool calling and chat interfaces across providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. The documentation site lists version 7 as the latest major version.
It is a weaker choice for:
Most used first.
Open source framework for building applications with language models, paired with the LangSmith platform.
Open source data framework for connecting language models to your own data, plus a paid parsing platform.
MIT-licensed Python framework for multi-agent workflows, with a paid platform for deployment.
Low-level orchestration framework from LangChain for long-running, stateful agents.
TypeScript framework for AI agents and workflows, Apache 2.0 licensed, with a managed platform.
| Tool | Pricing | Free plan | Paid from | Open source | GitHub stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 | None |
| 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 |
| 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 | 52.4k |
| 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 | None |
| 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 | None |
| 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) | None |
Pricing facts come from each tool's official pricing page, with the checked date on the tool's own page.
By GitHub stars, LangChain is the most used alternative to Vercel AI SDK listed on ScratchDB, with 148k stars.
LangChain, LlamaIndex, CrewAI, LangGraph and Mastra are open source.
LangChain and LlamaIndex have a free plan. The table on this page shows what each one includes.
