Laminar vs LangSmith
Laminar
laminar.sh
LangSmith
langchain.comSide by side
| Figure | Laminar | LangSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $30/mo | $39/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 3 |
| Spec score · AI Agent Observability Tools | 8.1 (#16) | 9.1 (#4) |
| Spec score · Prompt Engineering Tools | 8.1 (#13) | 9.1 (#4) |
| Spec score · Llm Monitoring | 8.0 (#15) | 8.9 (#6) |
| Spec score · LLM Observability Tools | 8.1 (#17) | 9.0 (#5) |
| Spec score · Model Monitoring Software | 8.1 (#17) | 9.0 (#4) |
| Deployment | Laminar offers managed cloud and self-hosting; its site says self-hosted deployments can run on AWS or GCP with Helm charts. | Deployment provides managed or self-hosted agent servers with streaming, cron scheduling, authentication, MCP support and more than 30 API endpoints. |
| Integrations | Documented integrations include OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Cohere, LiteLLM, Vercel AI SDK, LangChain, Pydantic AI, Claude Code, Codex, Browser Use, Stagehand, Playwright, and others. | Documented integrations cover OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Gemini, Mistral, LiteLLM, OpenTelemetry, CrewAI, Vercel AI SDK, PydanticAI, AutoGen and many other frameworks and providers. |
| Security | Laminar states it is HIPAA and SOC 2 Type II compliant and offers server-side PII redaction on eligible plans. | LangSmith's trust center lists SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, GDPR and HIPAA compliance. |
| Support | The listed support options are community support on Free, email on Starter, Slack on Pro, and dedicated support for Enterprise. | The Developer plan includes community support, and the Enterprise plan lists a support SLA. |
| Tracing | It traces LLM calls, tool use, custom functions, and sub-agents, and presents traces as readable transcripts. | Tracing records agent conversations and runs step by step, including prompts, model calls, tools, errors, latency and token usage. |
Plans
In their own words
Laminar
Laminar is an open-source, OpenTelemetry-native observability and debugging platform for AI agents. It traces LLM calls, tools, custom functions, and sub-agents as readable transcripts. Signals turn plain-language outcomes or failures into structured events across traces. Its debugger replays runs from cache to a selected point, while evaluations run against datasets locally or in CI to catch regressions. Laminar provides realtime traces, full-text search, raw SQL through its UI, CLI, or MCP, and custom dashboards. Integrations include OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Cohere, LangChain, Pydantic AI, Claude Code, and Playwright. Deployment is available through managed cloud or self-hosting, including AWS or GCP with Helm charts. The Free plan is free with 1 GB data and seven-day retention. Starter costs $30 a month; Pro costs $150 a month.
LangSmith
LangSmith is a commercial agent-engineering platform for building, evaluating, deploying, monitoring, and improving AI agents. It supports offline evaluations on curated datasets and real-time scoring of production interactions. Evaluation methods include human review, heuristic checks, LLM-as-judge evaluators, pairwise comparisons, and custom Python or TypeScript evaluators. Annotation queues route runs to subject-matter experts for feedback that can calibrate evaluations, improve prompts, or augment datasets. The Playground compares prompt versions or model providers, and LangSmith chat can auto-improve prompts. Observability includes agent and retrieval tracing, token and general cost tracking, trajectory monitoring, online evaluations, and webhook or PagerDuty alerts. Traces can arrive through SDKs or an API from LangGraph, custom Python, or other stacks; SDKs are listed for Python, TypeScript, Go, and Java. Hosting ranges from cloud to hybrid and self-hosted Enterprise options. The Developer plan costs nothing, Plus costs $39 a month, and Enterprise pricing is custom.