Framework
comparison
A concise comparison of Agent RT, LangChain, and LlamaIndex across runtime features plus checked-in installation footprint, latency, and memory measurements.
How to read this table✅ means built in, ◐ means available or integration-dependent, and — means it is not a primary built-in focus. Benchmark figures are scenario-specific measurements from the repository comparison suite, not universal framework rankings. Python fresh-install footprint is the 2026-10-03 Python 3.13.13 clean-
uv venv measurement above the empty-venv baseline. TypeScript fresh-install footprint is the 2026-10-03 Node.js 22.22.2/npm 10.9.7 clean-project measurement of logical node_modules bytes. Both include transitive dependencies.⚖️ Quick comparison
| ⚡ Agent RT | 🦜 LangChain | 🗂️ LlamaIndex | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🎯 Primary focus | 🧠 Agent runtime | 🧩 App/orchestration framework | 📚 Data & RAG framework |
 Python +  TypeScript | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 🛠️ Tools & agent loop | ✅ Built-in | ✅ | ✅ |
| 🔐 Permissions & approvals | ✅ Built-in | ◐ | ◐ |
| 🧰 API & CLI tools | ✅ Built-in (optional packages) | — | — |
| 🌐 OpenAI + Anthropic compatible API | ✅ Built-in server adapters | ◐ Integration-dependent | ◐ Integration-dependent |
| 🛡️ Agent Action Guard | ✅ Built-in integration (opt-in) | — | — |
| 🧠 Decision-model control gates | ✅ Tool pruning, memory/retrieval gates, failure classification | — | — |
| 🧠 Harmful-memory guard | ✅ Decision-model screening before memory persistence and retrieval exposure; detects harmful-action influence, misleading authority, instruction hijacking, and safeguard bypass attempts | ◐ Application/integration-defined | ◐ Application/integration-defined |
| 🔎 Tool/skill pre-registration safety scan | ✅ Deterministic scan of names, descriptions, schemas/metadata, skill frontmatter/instructions, embedded tools, and string resources | ◐ Application/integration-defined | ◐ Application/integration-defined |
| 🚧 Decision approval for external tools/skills | ✅ Fail-closed Decision-model scan before filesystem skill activation; checked registration path for untrusted tools | ◐ Application/integration-defined | ◐ Application/integration-defined |
| ✂️ Tool catalog pruning before model call | ✅ Built-in | ◐ Integration-dependent | ◐ Integration-dependent |
| 📦 Sandboxing | ✅ Fail-closed backend selection | ◐ | ◐ |
| ♻️ Budget-preserving checkpoints | ✅ Resume with prior turn/tool/token budgets | ◐ | ◐ |
| 💾 Memory & checkpoints | ✅ Built-in | ✅ | ✅ |
| 🗃️ Switch vector DBs | ✅ Simple env/registry switch | ◐ Integration-dependent | ◐ Integration-dependent |
| 🔌 Provider-neutral | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 🪶 Lightweight runtime focus | ✅ | ◐ | ◐ |
| Fresh install footprint | 46.43 MiB | 69.87 MiB | 219.91 MiB |
| Warm latency | 1.56 ms | 9.03 ms | 4.26 ms |
| Runtime memory | +5.86 MiB | +19.77 MiB | +22.42 MiB |
| Fresh install footprint | 1.24 MiB | 82.44 MiB | 60.38 MiB |
| Warm latency | 1.85 ms | 2.60 ms | 2.23 ms |
| Runtime memory | +14.33 MiB | +17.27 MiB | +16.79 MiB |
📊 For benchmark methodology, environment, raw measured outputs, startup results, tool-loop measurements, and schema-token analysis, see the reproducible framework benchmarks ↗.