CrewAI

CrewAI is the fastest way to get multi-agent AI systems into production. Define agents with roles (Researcher, Writer, Analyst), assign tasks, and let the crew orchestrate. 47k stars, 12 million daily agent executions, and native MCP support. If you're building an AI-powered workflow for your indie SaaS, CrewAI gets you there with the least boilerplate.

LangGraph is the enterprise choice for deterministic, auditable agent workflows — graph-based, human-in-the-loop, but steeper learning curve. AutoGen pioneered the conversational pattern but is in maintenance mode. For simple single-agent tasks, you don't need any framework.

Use CrewAI if you need multiple agents collaborating on business workflows — content pipelines, research tasks, data processing. The role-based mental model is intuitive.

The catch: running three agents sequentially means three LLM calls, higher token costs, and slower execution. Production monitoring is less mature than LangGraph's. Sequential execution by default — parallel is available but less polished. And for latency-sensitive applications (real-time chat, interactive tools), the multi-agent overhead may be prohibitive. Start with one agent and add more only when complexity demands it.