AI Agents Hub
← Back to all agents
Framework Open Source
CrewAI
Orchestrate role-playing agents that collaborate on tasks.
Our take
Most approachable multi-agent framework — great for prototyping teams.
What it is
CrewAI is a Python framework for orchestrating multiple AI agents that play defined roles (e.g., "researcher", "writer", "reviewer") and collaborate on a task. It is the most approachable multi-agent framework: the mental model is "a team with job titles", and you can get a working crew in under 50 lines of code.
Best for
- Multi-agent research / writing crews
- Prototyping a team-of-agents idea in an afternoon
- Role-based task delegation with shared context
Pros
- Easiest multi-agent framework to get started with
- Role-based mental model is intuitive
- Active community and good docs
Cons
- Less fine-grained control than LangGraph for complex state
- Occasional "agent loops" — needs prompt tuning
Quick start
- Install: `pip install crewai crewai-tools`.
- Pick an LLM: `from langchain_openai import ChatOpenAI` (or Anthropic / OpenRouter / Ollama) and load your API key.
- Define agents: each Agent has role, goal, backstory, optional tools, and an LLM.
- Define Tasks with explicit expected_output, then bind them to a Crew with process=sequential or hierarchical.
- Run: `crew.kickoff(inputs={"topic": "..."})`. Verbose=True prints every thought and tool call.
Sample input / output
Input
Task: "Draft a 600-word blog post on the current state of multi-agent systems, citing 3 papers from 2025–2026."Output
Crew execution (~3 min, 3 agents):
1. Researcher → 5 candidate papers pulled + 1-sentence summaries [3 min]
2. Writer → 600-word Markdown draft with citations, intro / 3 sections / conclusion [2 min]
3. Editor → fact-check pass, source links pinned to each claim [1 min]
Final post saved to ./draft.md. 18 LLM calls, ~9,000 tokens.Benchmarks
GitHub stars 44,700+ — github.com/joaomdmoura/crewAI, April 2026
License MIT
Certified developers ~100,000 community — Tencent Cloud article
Process modes Sequential / Hierarchical / Custom
Pricing
Free library; CrewAI Enterprise paid
Underlying models
Self-hosting
Yes — CrewAI can be self-hosted under the MIT license. This gives you full control over data and deployment.
Should you pick this?
Pick it if You want the fastest path to a multi-agent system that "just works" — CrewAI's role-task-crew abstraction is the easiest mental model on the market.
Skip it if You need fine-grained control over graph execution, cycles, and conditional retries — LangGraph gives you a true state-machine. AutoGen is also better for open-ended research agents.