Best multi-agent frameworks in 2026
Frameworks for orchestrating several agents with roles, handoffs and shared state, plus the best write-ups on how production multi-agent systems are built. Updated October 2026 · 15 picks.
1. CrewAI
Define role-based agent crews with tasks and processes; good for quickly orchestrating researcher/writer/reviewer style teams.
Source →2. AutoGen
Microsoft's framework for conversational multi-agent systems; agents message each other and call tools in event-driven loops.
Source →3. LangGraph
Model agent workflows as stateful graphs with checkpoints, human-in-the-loop interrupts and multi-agent supervisors.
Source →4. OpenAI Agents SDK
Lightweight Python SDK with agents, handoffs, guardrails and tracing; use handoffs to route between specialist agents.
Source →5. Google Agent Development Kit (ADK)
Code-first toolkit for building, evaluating and deploying hierarchical multi-agent apps on Gemini or other models.
Source →6. Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol
Open protocol for agents built on different frameworks to discover each other and delegate tasks over HTTP.
Source →7. MetaGPT
Assigns software-company roles (PM, architect, engineer) to agents that collaborate via SOPs to produce a project.
Source →8. CAMEL
Research framework for role-playing communicative agents; useful for studying agent societies and generating data.
Source →9. Swarms
Enterprise-oriented orchestration library with many swarm topologies (sequential, hierarchical, mixture-of-agents).
Source →10. Anthropic: How we built our multi-agent research system
Engineering write-up on orchestrator/subagent research: parallel subagents, effort scaling and prompt lessons.
Source →11. Anthropic: Building effective agents
Canonical guide to workflow patterns (prompt chaining, routing, orchestrator-workers) before reaching for full autonomy.
Source →12. Mastra
TypeScript agent framework with workflows, agent networks, memory and evals built in.
Source →13. Pydantic AI
Type-safe Python agent framework; structured outputs and dependency injection make multi-step agents testable.
Source →14. Agno
Fast Python framework for agents and agent teams with memory, knowledge and tool integrations.
Source →15. LlamaIndex
Framework for document agents and RAG.
Source →