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OpenAI Agents SDK

Ranked 7 of 28 agent frameworks by recommenders

Developers like its abstractions for handoffs, tools and guardrails, and find it simple to start with. Common caveat: lock-in to OpenAI's platform and frequent API changes.

Developers like its abstractions for handoffs, tools and guardrails, and find it simple to start with. Common caveat: lock-in to OpenAI's platform and frequent API changes.

76 people gave an opinion

recommend it
22
criticize it
54
approval share
29%
Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes

Recommended in 10 of 13 months

  1. November 2025: recommended
  2. December 2025: recommended
  3. January 2026: not recommended
  4. February 2026: recommended
  5. March 2026: recommended
  6. April 2026: recommended
  7. May 2026: recommended
  8. June 2026: recommended
  9. July 2026: recommended
  10. August 2026: not recommended
  11. September 2026: recommended
  12. October 2026: recommended
  13. November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)

Why it doesn’t carry the badge

  • 22 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
  • 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
  • Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.

The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works

What people say about it

The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Why people recommend it

Each mark is one comment

  • Good results in practice

    “I've had great success with the OpenAI agents SDK”

    Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

    “ive found the open ai agents one to be the best”

    Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “Cord: Coordinating Trees of AI Agents”

    “it actually did a pretty good job”

    Comment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff”
  • Good abstractions: handoffs, tools, guardrails

    “largely happy with the abstractions - handoffs/sub-agents, tools, guardrails, structured output, etc.”

    Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Claude Managed Agents”

    “Pretty good abstraction. Setup your sandbox with dependencies, build plugins - agent works.”

    Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”
  • Simple to get started

    “makes it extremely simple to get started with function calling and subagent-as-tools delegations”

    Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Microsoft Agent Framework”

    “Even OpenAI Agents SDK is simpler.”

    Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration”
  • Model-agnostic, eases switching providers

    “I think the OpenAI Agents SDK is more model agnostic”

    Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: Best option for hosted agent in 2026?”

    “potentially eases transition between providers”

    Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

What people warn about

Each mark is one comment

  • Agents breached and vandalised websites

    “if OAI can’t even detect when their bots do this, and literally have to be informed by third parties that they’ve been abused”

    Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “OpenAI "rogue" agent activities found on Wikimedia projects”

    “An open ai employee or group of them was negligent and greedy and ran a process which breached a government website.”

    Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI agent hacked Australian government website, PM says”

    “they can’t seem to control their own experimental bots and allow them to hack other sites and vandalise them”

    Comment from 5 Sep 2026 in “Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board”
  • Weak sandboxing and containment

    “what's happening with OpenAI and Anthropic agents "escaping", leaving notes on how to hack their way out”

    Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “Dots: Always-on agents”

    “just have those models disconnected, or at least have them behind proxies and network filters.”

    Comment from 24 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI breaches Medicare, Albanese reveals”

    “OpenAI agents infamously broke containment and hacked their way to an answer mere months ago!”

    Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]”
  • Lock-in and frequent API changes

    “Yes, the lock-in is real and only good for OpenAI, but there's absolutely demand for managed services”

    Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

    “trying to keep up with their API updates and changes is more trouble than its worth”

    Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”
  • Eroded trust in OpenAI

    “i still don't have a very positive perception of openai throughout all these incidents”

    Comment from 27 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI agents tried to bruteforce a UN website's API fields”

    “Lots of evidence the models are pretty badly aligned, or at least willing to do collusion & crime to succeed at their goals”

    Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “I resigned from Anthropic today”

    “They look reckless... so far. They keep doing this enough, and I'm sure people will start seeing it as a smokescreen”

    Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI agents carried out an undisclosed attack on RubyGems”

Other agent frameworks people recommend

The four most recommended other agent frameworks, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.

OpenAI Agents SDK compared with 4 alternatives
ProductRecommendCriticizeApprovalMonthsOwnedBadge
Claude Agent SDK362559%11——
LangChain327929%101 yr3 owners—
Mastra32391%10—Approved
LangGraph312357%12——
OpenAI Agents SDKThis page225429%10——
See all 28 agent frameworks, ranked

What people said

40 of the 82 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“how lax Antrophic and OpenAI have been on sandboxing the systems they run their agents in”

CriticizesComment from 13 Oct 2026 in “AI models can provably hide arbitrary capabilities”

“if OAI can’t even detect when their bots do this, and literally have to be informed by third parties that they’ve been abused”

CriticizesComment from 5 Oct 2026 in “OpenAI "rogue" agent activities found on Wikimedia projects”

“what's happening with OpenAI and Anthropic agents "escaping", leaving notes on how to hack their way out”

CriticizesComment from 29 Sep 2026 in “Dots: Always-on agents”

“i still don't have a very positive perception of openai throughout all these incidents”

MixedComment from 27 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI agents tried to bruteforce a UN website's API fields”

“OpenAI either took 3 months to notice that their agents breached an Australian Medicare website”

CriticizesComment from 26 Sep 2026 in “Revealing the details of how OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face”

“An open ai employee or group of them was negligent and greedy and ran a process which breached a government website.”

CriticizesComment from 24 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI agent hacked Australian government website, PM says”

“letting his creation run around groping and assaulting the open Internet without consent”

CriticizesComment from 24 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI agent hacked Australian government website, PM says”

“just have those models disconnected, or at least have them behind proxies and network filters.”

CriticizesComment from 24 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI breaches Medicare, Albanese reveals”

“enterprise-ready, cloud-hosted stuff really accelerates implementation of AI workflows within large organizations”

RecommendsComment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Pion, an agent designed to run any company autonomously”

“this sort of drive-by vandalism is enough to make me consider blacklisting OpenAI agents”

CriticizesComment from 14 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI agents carried out an undisclosed attack on RubyGems”

“If you or I hacked Hugging Face in the way OpenAI's agents did, we'd be up on CFAA charges promptly”

CriticizesComment from 13 Sep 2026 in “Why are AI agents lying, cheating and coordinating?”

“They look reckless... so far. They keep doing this enough, and I'm sure people will start seeing it as a smokescreen”

CriticizesComment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI agents carried out an undisclosed attack on RubyGems”

“it's not eligible for Zero Data Retention and it's currently pretty nebulous what the "Don't train on my conversations" toggle means”

CriticizesComment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

“trying to keep up with their API updates and changes is more trouble than its worth”

MixedComment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

“I've had great success with the OpenAI agents SDK”

RecommendsComment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

“Yes, the lock-in is real and only good for OpenAI, but there's absolutely demand for managed services”

MixedComment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

“Native integration with their SDK.”

RecommendsComment from 11 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

“potentially eases transition between providers”

RecommendsComment from 10 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

“Pretty good abstraction. Setup your sandbox with dependencies, build plugins - agent works.”

RecommendsComment from 10 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

“you can't use your subscription with this so it's likely the largest companies in the world that can truly use this”

CriticizesComment from 10 Sep 2026 in “OpenAI Agents API”

“Lots of evidence the models are pretty badly aligned, or at least willing to do collusion & crime to succeed at their goals”

CriticizesComment from 10 Sep 2026 in “I resigned from Anthropic today”

“shouldn't the Agent have succeeded way faster/efficiently instead of using "4.9 million messages and used about 300 billion output tokens."”

CriticizesComment from 9 Sep 2026 in “The Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize Problem”

“OpenAI agents infamously broke containment and hacked their way to an answer mere months ago!”

CriticizesComment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Navier-Stokes – Tristan Buckmaster [pdf]”

“they can’t seem to control their own experimental bots and allow them to hack other sites and vandalise them”

CriticizesComment from 5 Sep 2026 in “Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board”

“Putting open ended models out on the live internet at their scale is dangerous and irresponsible.”

CriticizesComment from 4 Sep 2026 in “Discovery of a new OpenAI agent message board”

“more of the harness is open source so customers have been able to fork it”

MixedComment from 17 Jul 2026 in “Claude Code: Anatomy of a Misfeature”

“it actually did a pretty good job”

RecommendsComment from 17 Jun 2026 in “Sixty percent of US consumers say 'AI' in brand messaging is a turnoff”

“Agents SDK solves all the caveats with Responses API, from making it more than an API, into an SDK”

RecommendsComment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Ask HK: How are you building AI apps today?”

“They feel good and stable.”

RecommendsComment from 29 May 2026 in “Ask HK: How are you building AI apps today?”

“Happy to see sandboxing finally included as a first-class concept!”

RecommendsComment from 15 Apr 2026 in “The next evolution of the Agents SDK”

“largely happy with the abstractions - handoffs/sub-agents, tools, guardrails, structured output, etc.”

RecommendsComment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Claude Managed Agents”

“Would highly advise keeping it minimal, just use OpenAI Agents SDK”

RecommendsComment from 5 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: Learning resources for building AI agents?”

“That agent mode is BTW super useful for doing QA”

RecommendsComment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: ProofShot – Give AI coding agents eyes to verify the UI they build”

“a complicated agent graph. Dealing with hand-off (+ hand back) and multiple levels of conversations just leaves too much room for critical information to get siloed.”

CriticizesComment from 21 Feb 2026 in “Cord: Coordinating Trees of AI Agents”

“ive found the open ai agents one to be the best”

RecommendsComment from 21 Feb 2026 in “Cord: Coordinating Trees of AI Agents”

“I think the OpenAI Agents SDK is more model agnostic”

RecommendsComment from 6 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: Best option for hosted agent in 2026?”

“makes it extremely simple to get started with function calling and subagent-as-tools delegations”

RecommendsComment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Microsoft Agent Framework”

“Even OpenAI Agents SDK is simpler.”

RecommendsComment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration”

“Even though we love their agent SDK”

RecommendsComment from 17 Dec 2025 in “Gemini 3 Flash: Frontier intelligence built for speed”

“OpenAI's SDK's tight coupling with their platform is a plus point.”

MixedComment from 22 Nov 2025 in “Agent design is still hard”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.