Comparisons / Google ADK vs Smolagents
Google ADK vs Smolagents: Which Agent Framework to Use?
Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK) is an open-source framework for building multi-agent systems. Smolagents is HuggingFace's minimalist agent library. Here is how they compare — paradigm, ecosystem, and the use cases each one is actually built for.
By the numbers
Google ADK
18.7k
3.2k
Python
Apache-2.0
2025-04-01
Google/Alphabet
Vertex AI
Yes
Smolagents
26.4k
2.4k
Python
Apache-2.0
2024-12-05
Hugging Face
GitHub stats as of April 2026. Stars indicate community interest, not necessarily quality or fit for your use case.
| Concept | Google ADK | Smolagents |
|---|---|---|
| Agent | `LlmAgent` class with model, instructions, and `sub_agents` list | `CodeAgent` or `ToolCallingAgent` with model and tools list |
| Tools | `FunctionTool`, built-in tools (Search, Code Exec), third-party integrations | `@tool` decorator or `Tool` class with name, description, and callable |
| Agent Loop | `Runner.run()` with automatic tool dispatch and sub-agent delegation | Internal loop: think (LLM reasons), act (code/tool call), observe (result) |
| Multi-Agent | Hierarchical agent tree with root agent delegating to specialized sub-agents | — |
| Workflows | `SequentialAgent`, `ParallelAgent`, `LoopAgent` workflow primitives | — |
| Session | Session and State service with typed channels and persistence | — |
| Code Actions | — | `CodeAgent` writes Python code as its action, executed in sandbox |
| Sandbox | — | E2B, Docker, Modal, or Pyodide sandbox for safe code execution |
| Model Support | — | HuggingFace Hub models, OpenAI, Anthropic, local via LiteLLM |
Google ADK vs Smolagents, head to head
Google ADK Google's Agent Development Kit (ADK) is an open-source framework for building multi-agent systems.
Smolagents Smolagents is HuggingFace's minimalist agent library.
Both wrap the same underlying agent pattern — an LLM call, a tool dispatch, a loop — in different abstractions. The choice between them is mostly about which mental model and ecosystem fits the team you have, not which one is technically more capable.
Pick Google ADK if
Pick Google ADK if aDK earns its complexity when you need multi-agent orchestration on Google Cloud with Vertex AI deployment. If you're using Gemini and need production-grade agent infrastructure, it's well-designed. For single-agent use cases or non-Google stacks, plain Python keeps things simpler. Google ADK is the right fit when the tradeoffs in its intro line up with how your team actually wants to work day-to-day; Smolagents would force you to translate.
Pick Smolagents if
Pick Smolagents if smolagents lives up to its name — it's genuinely minimal and the code-agent approach is a real innovation that reduces LLM calls by ~30%. If you want a lightweight agent library with HuggingFace ecosystem access, it's excellent. For understanding the fundamentals, the plain version is even simpler. Smolagents is the right fit when the tradeoffs in its intro line up with how your team actually wants to work day-to-day; Google ADK would force you to translate.
What both add
Both Google ADK and Smolagents pull in a class hierarchy and a dependency tree to wrap what is, at the core, an HTTP POST in a while loop. If your use case is straightforward — one provider, a handful of tools, a single agent — the framework cost may exceed the framework benefit. The lesson below shows the same pattern in ~60 lines without either dependency.
Or build your own in 60 lines
Both Google ADK and Smolagents implement the same 8 patterns. An agent is a function. Tools are a dict. The loop is a while loop. The whole thing composes in ~60 lines of Python.
No framework. No dependencies. No opinions. Just the code.
Build it from scratch →