Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) vs OpenAI Agents SDK
A side-by-side comparison of capabilities, autonomy, integrations, and pricing to help you choose.
Short answer: choose Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) if you want open-source framework for building and orchestrating multi-agent systems (Supervised agent, free); choose OpenAI Agents SDK if you want lightweight open-source framework for building multi-agent workflows (Supervised agent, free).
| Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) | OpenAI Agents SDK | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Open-source framework for building and orchestrating multi-agent systems | Lightweight open-source framework for building multi-agent workflows |
| Type | framework | framework |
| Autonomy | Supervised agent | Supervised agent |
| Pricing | free · Free (open source; pay model + cloud usage) | free · Free (open source; pay underlying model usage) |
| Best for | developers, enterprise | developers |
| Deployment | self-hosted, api | self-hosted, api |
| Modalities | text, code, api | text, code, voice, api |
| Models | gemini, model-agnostic | model-agnostic, gpt |
| Protocols | a2a, mcp, function-calling, rest-api | mcp, function-calling, rest-api |
| Integrations | Vertex AI, Cloud Run, Gemini, LiteLLM, MCP servers | OpenAI API, MCP servers, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript |
| Capabilities | 3 documented | 4 documented |
Google Agent Development Kit (ADK)
- +Backed by Google with first-class deployment to Vertex AI and Cloud Run
- +Built around the open A2A protocol for cross-framework agent interoperability
- +Model-agnostic via LiteLLM despite Gemini-first defaults
- -A framework, not a product: you build, host, and secure agents yourself
- -Strongest when paired with Google Cloud, which can imply lock-in
OpenAI Agents SDK
- +Minimal, low-abstraction framework that is quick to learn
- +Built-in handoffs, guardrails, sessions, and tracing
- +Provider-agnostic (100+ LLMs) with Python and JS/TS (and voice) SDKs
- -A framework, not a product: you build, host, and secure the agent yourself
- -Autonomy and safety depend entirely on how the developer configures it
Which should you choose?
Google Agent Development Kit (ADK) is open-source framework for building and orchestrating multi-agent systems, best for developers, enterprise. OpenAI Agents SDK is lightweight open-source framework for building multi-agent workflows, best for developers. The right choice depends on the autonomy level you want, your existing integrations, and your budget, all compared above.