OpenAI Agents SDK
OpenAI Agents SDK by OpenAI: what it does, how it works, pricing and adoption — sourced and dated.
Agent frameworks Open source · MIT ≈29.8K GitHub stars (2026-09)
The OpenAI Agents SDK launched March 11, 2025 alongside the Responses API, as the production evolution of OpenAI's experimental Swarm project. It keeps the abstraction minimal — agents, handoffs, guardrails, tracing — and has grown by steady additions (including native sandbox execution in April 2026) rather than rewrites. About 29,800 GitHub stars.
How it works
A deliberately small core: agents with instructions and tools, handoffs between specialist agents, guardrails validating inputs and outputs, and built-in tracing. Sandbox execution arrived in 2026 for agents that need to run code.
The facts
| Maker | OpenAI |
| Type | Agent framework |
| Category | Agent frameworks |
| Status | Active |
| Launched | 2025 |
| License | MIT |
| Models | Optimised for OpenAI models but works with any Chat Completions-compatible provider; Python first, with a JavaScript/TypeScript sibling. |
| GitHub stars | 29,789 (snapshot 2026-09) · openai/openai-agents-python |
| Website | https://openai.com |
Pricing
Free and open source (MIT) — you pay only for the model API usage your agents consume.
Pricing model: Free / open source · Source: published tiers · checked Oct 14, 2026
Frameworks run on models — compare them in the model database or check the price comparison before you build.
Also in Agent frameworks
- LangGraph — LangChain
- CrewAI — CrewAI
- AutoGen — Microsoft
- Microsoft Agent Framework — Microsoft
- LlamaIndex — LlamaIndex
- Strands Agents — AWS
Sources
- AI Plus Info — Microsoft Agent Framework vs OpenAI Agents SDK (2026)
- GitHub catalog snapshot — rivendale/opensource (Sep 2026)
Profile verified Oct 14, 2026. Spotted an error? Every figure above links to its source.