JetBrains published a comprehensive comparison of nine agentic AI frameworks on Monday, providing one of the most structured evaluations available for developers choosing between competing agent platforms in 2026. The guide covers LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, Haystack, CrewAI, AutoGen, OpenClaw, Google ADK, and Agno, rating each across five criteria: orchestration model, multi-agent support, memory capabilities, human-in-the-loop (HITL) support, and best-fit applications.
Three Orchestration Paradigms
The guide organizes the ecosystem around three core architectural patterns, according to JetBrains.
Graph-based orchestration (used by LangGraph) structures agents and tools as nodes in a directed graph. Execution paths are defined in advance, producing deterministic behavior suitable for regulated or customer-facing production systems. The tradeoff is more upfront design work and less emergent behavior.
Role-based orchestration (used by CrewAI and AutoGen) assigns agents specific roles like “Planner,” “Researcher,” or “Builder.” Agents collaborate by sending messages to each other, mirroring how human teams work. This approach enables rapid prototyping but makes strict execution paths harder to enforce.
Chain-based orchestration (used by LangChain) gives agents the most flexibility, operating in dynamic chains or loops where the agent decides the next step autonomously. JetBrains notes this is ideal for research and creative tasks but creates challenges for governance at scale.
The Framework Matrix
JetBrains rates each framework across five dimensions. LangGraph and Haystack score highest on production readiness with strong memory and HITL support. CrewAI and AutoGen excel at multi-agent coordination for rapid prototyping. LlamaIndex is positioned as the strongest choice for knowledge-heavy retrieval agents.
OpenClaw appears in the comparison as a framework with strong multi-agent capabilities and growing enterprise adoption, though the guide notes its orchestration model differs from the traditional paradigms by operating as an agent runtime rather than a developer SDK.
Timing
The comparison arrives during Build 2026 week, where Microsoft announced its own Windows Agent Framework, Azure Agent Mesh, and MXC execution containers. Google shipped its Agent Development Kit (ADK) at I/O. Nvidia launched its Agent Toolkit at GTC Taipei. The framework layer is becoming as competitive as the model layer, with platform vendors and open-source projects fighting to define how agents are built, orchestrated, and governed.
For developers evaluating their agent stack, the JetBrains guide serves as a practical starting point. The full comparison, including a framework selection matrix, is available on the JetBrains PyCharm blog.