OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) alternatives

OpenAI Swarm — experimental educational multi-agent framework released Oct 2024; deprecated in favour of the OpenAI Agents SDK in Mar 2025. Full OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) record →

Official migration path

Swarm's README says it is replaced by the OpenAI Agents SDK, a production-ready evolution, and recommends migrating for all production use (repo not archived).

Move to: OpenAI Agents SDK

  1. Install the SDK with pip install openai-agents (or uv add openai-agents) and set OPENAI_API_KEY
  2. Replace Swarm imports with from agents import Agent, Runner and define agents with name and instructions
  3. Declare delegation via the handoffs=[...] parameter, giving each specialist a handoff_description
  4. Run with await Runner.run(agent, input) and read result.final_output

Sources: github.com · openai.github.io · checked 2026-10-26

Other live alternatives

  1. 1 LangChain (framework) Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer)

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    OSS ✓ Self-host ✓ Managed ✓ MCP ✓ ★ 149k released 2026-10-21 MIT (OSS framework) Compare with OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) →

  2. 2 Cline (framework) Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer)

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    OSS ✓ Self-host ✓ Managed ✓ MCP ✓ ★ 68k Apache-2.0 Compare with OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) →

  3. 3 CrewAI Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer)

    also in Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer) · also open source · also self-hostable · also offered managed

    OSS ✓ Self-host ✓ Managed ✓ MCP ✓ ★ 59k released 2026-10-24 MIT Compare with OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) →

  4. 4 LlamaIndex (framework) Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer)

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    OSS ✓ Self-host ✓ Managed ✓ MCP ✓ ★ 53k released 2026-09-21 MIT Compare with OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) →

  5. 5 LangGraph (orchestration) Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer)

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    OSS ✓ Self-host ✓ Managed ✓ MCP ✓ ★ 44k released 2026-10-26 MIT Compare with OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) →

  6. 6 Vercel AI SDK Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer)

    also in Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer) · also open source · also self-hostable · also offered managed

    OSS ✓ Self-host ✓ Managed ✓ MCP ✓ ★ 28k released 2026-10-26 Apache-2.0 Compare with OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) →

  7. 7 Haystack (framework) Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer)

    also in Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer) · also open source · also self-hostable · also offered managed

    OSS ✓ Self-host ✓ Managed ✓ MCP ✓ ★ 27k released 2026-10-21 Apache-2.0 Compare with OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) →

  8. 8 Temporal Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer)

    also in Agent frameworks (no first-party memory layer) · also open source · also self-hostable · also offered managed

    OSS ✓ Self-host ✓ Managed ✓ MCP ? ★ 24k released 2026-10-08 MIT Compare with OpenAI Swarm (deprecated) →

Ranked by shared memory design (storage, retrieval, conflict handling, memory unit), same section and shared must-haves (open source, self-hosting, MCP), with adoption as a tie-breaker. ✓ confirmed · — no · ? not in the catalog yet. Want picks for your own requirements? Use the chooser. Checking a whole project? Check your stack.