Agno vs Google ADK: agent frameworks compared

Agno and Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK) are both Apache-2.0 open-source agent projects, but their sources frame them differently. Agno describes running agents as a service through a REST API and MCP server. ADK describes a code-first framework for building, evaluating and deploying agents in several languages. Checked 2026-10-14.

Quick comparison

The row order is editorial and follows the query wording. It is not a ranking of quality.

How the options differ

What each project says it is for

Agno's docs say it helps companies run agents as a service, and to build products on top of coding agents, knowledge agents and MCP servers. Its repository description is "Build, run, and manage agent platforms."

The Agno docs describe a three-part flow: build with any SDK, run with AgentOS, and manage with the Control Plane. They also say Agno provides the orchestration and service layer around your agents.

ADK's site calls it an open-source agent development framework for building, debugging and deploying reliable AI agents at enterprise scale. The adk-python repository describes an "open-source, code-first Python toolkit for building, evaluating, and deploying sophisticated AI agents."

The main documented distinction is therefore the layer each project addresses. Agno emphasizes the service layer around agents, while ADK emphasizes the agent-building framework itself.

Languages and SDKs

ADK's site says it is available in Python, TypeScript, Go, Java and Kotlin, and shows a code sample for each.

Agno's docs say you can build agents with the Agno SDK, Claude Agent SDK, Codex SDK, or another supported framework. The sources do not list which programming languages Agno supports beyond these SDK names.

Models

ADK's FAQ says it can work with almost any generative AI model. It describes easy access to Gemini, adapters for other models and providers including locally running models, and connections to models on hosted services such as Google Cloud.

The cited Agno sources name Claude Agent SDK and Codex SDK as harness options, but they do not include a model-provider support list.

Deployment and operations

Agno's docs say agents run as a secure, durable service through an API and MCP server, with durable execution and multi-replica scaling. They describe exposing agents in your product via REST API, in Claude and ChatGPT via the MCP server, and in Slack, WhatsApp and Telegram via Interfaces. The AgentOS UI is described as a way to monitor runs, inspect sessions and manage the platform.

The Agno docs also list starter prompts that point to separate agentos repositories for Railway, Docker, AWS, Fly, GCP, Helm, Azure, Render and Modal.

ADK's site says you can containerize and run it on your own infrastructure, or use native one-command deployment to Google Cloud. It names Agent Runtime (Agent Platform), Cloud Run and GKE as targets, and says deployed agents inherit managed infrastructure, built-in authentication, Cloud Trace observability and enterprise-grade security.

Orchestration and context

ADK's site says ADK 2.0 adds graph-based architectures with explicit execution paths. It also says you can grow from prompts and tool calls to multi-agent orchestration, graph-based workflows and performance evaluation. Its FAQ describes context management that filters events, summarizes older turns, lazy-loads artifacts and tracks token usage.

The cited Agno sources describe building a multi-agent platform for a team and a personal agent that remembers projects, tasks and decisions. They do not describe a graph workflow feature or context-management behavior.

License and project history

The GitHub API reports Apache-2.0 for both google/adk-python and agno-agi/agno. The adk-python repository was created on 2025-04-01 and the Agno repository on 2022-05-04.

A repository license says nothing about the cost of any hosted service or model inference. Neither set of cited sources states pricing.

How we compared

We read the GitHub repository metadata for google/adk-python and agno-agi/agno. We also read the product sites at adk.dev and docs.agno.com. All sources were checked on 2026-10-14.

We did not install either project, run any code, benchmark performance, or verify the claims on the product sites. Everything above is what the sources state.

Limitations

• Pricing for hosted services, including Google Cloud deployment targets and any Agno platform offering, is not stated in the cited sources.
• Agno's supported model providers and programming languages are not stated in the cited sources.
• The ADK repository cited here is the Python one. Repository metadata for the other language SDKs was not read.
• The sources give no benchmarks, adoption figures or head-to-head performance data.
• Both product sites are vendor-authored, so the descriptions are self-reported.

For more, see the Frameworks category, the Agno hub and the adk-python hub. A related guide is Agno vs LangGraph: agent frameworks compared, and the latest launch notes are at adk-python 2.12.0 and Agno v3.1.3.