Head to head
OpenAI Agents SDK vs Claude Agent SDK
A side-by-side, sourced comparison. Facts come from each vendor’s own materials; scores are our editorial opinion applied by the same rubric to both.
In brief
OpenAI Agents SDK and Claude Agent SDK are both agent sdks. OpenAI Agents SDK leads on pricing transparency & value; Claude Agent SDK leads on developer experience, memory & state, mcp nativeness. Choose OpenAI Agents SDK if pricing transparency & value matters most, Claude Agent SDK if developer experience matters most.
| Dimension | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | The SDK is free and open source (MIT); you pay OpenAI (or the chosen provider's) API/token costs.source ↗ | The SDK library is free (the Python repo is MIT), but use is governed by Anthropic's Commercial Terms of Service and you pay Claude API token costs (or via Bedrock/Vertex/Azure).source ↗ |
| Hosting model | A self-deployed library (Python, with a TypeScript version too) that runs in your own process and infrastructure.source ↗ | A self-deployed library that runs the agent loop inside your own process; a separate hosted option (Managed Agents, an Anthropic-run sandbox per session) also exists.source ↗ |
| Memory & state | Sessions provide automatic conversation-history management across agent runs — a persistent working-context layer.source ↗ | Sessions maintain context across exchanges (files read, analysis, history), are resumable and forkable, and are stored as JSONL on your filesystem; it also supports CLAUDE.md memory files and automatic context compaction.source ↗ |
| MCP support | Nativesource ↗ | Nativesource ↗ |
| Integrations | Built-in tools (web search, file search, computer use via the Responses API), function tools, MCP servers, agent handoffs, and tracing/observability.source ↗ | Built-in tools (Read, Write, Edit, Bash, Glob, Grep, WebSearch, WebFetch), lifecycle hooks, subagents, permissions, Skills, slash commands, and plugins.source ↗ |
| Model providers | OpenAI-first (uses the Responses API by default for OpenAI models) but provider-agnostic — supports 100+ other LLMs via LiteLLM and any-llm adapters.source ↗ | Anthropic-first (Claude models); authenticates via the Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock, Google Vertex AI, or Microsoft Azure AI Foundry. No non-Claude model support is indicated.source ↗ |
| Open source | Yessource ↗ | Yessource ↗ |
| Developer experience(opinion) | 4/5 | 5/5 |
| Pricing transparency & value(opinion) | 5/5 | 4/5 |
| Scalability(opinion) | 3/5 | 3/5 |
| Memory & state(opinion) | 3/5 | 4/5 |
| Integrations(opinion) | 4/5 | 4/5 |
| MCP nativeness(opinion) | 4/5 | 5/5 |
The balanced view
Editorial opinion, derived from the scorecard above
Where OpenAI Agents SDK scores higher
In our rubric, OpenAI Agents SDK rates ahead on pricing transparency & value.
Where Claude Agent SDK scores higher
In our rubric, Claude Agent SDK rates ahead on developer experience, memory & state, mcp nativeness.
These two serve different needs — read the full dossiers for OpenAI Agents SDK and Claude Agent SDK before deciding. Neither has been hands-on tested by us yet.
Product and company names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the products under discussion.