Staxly

Langfuse vs LangChain

Open-source LLM engineering platform — observability, prompts, evals
vs. The framework for building LLM apps — chains, agents, RAG, LangGraph

Langfuse websiteLangChain website

Pricing tiers

Langfuse

Hobby (Cloud Free)
Free. 50k units/month included. 30 days data access. 2 users. Community support.
Free
Self-Hosted (OSS)
MIT-licensed. Docker Compose or Kubernetes deployment. Unlimited.
$0 base (usage-based)
Core
$29/month. 100k units included ($8 per 100k overage). 90 days retention. Unlimited users. In-app support.
$29/mo
Pro
$199/month. 100k units included + same overage. 3 YEARS retention. Unlimited annotation queues. High rate limits.
$199/mo
Teams Add-on
+$300/month. Adds Enterprise SSO + fine-grained RBAC + dedicated Slack support to Pro.
$300/mo
Enterprise
$2,499/month. Everything + custom rate limits, uptime SLA, dedicated support engineer. Yearly options.
$2499/mo
Langfuse website

LangChain

OSS (MIT)
MIT-licensed core library. Free forever. Python + JS.
$0 base (usage-based)
LangSmith (see entry)
Observability layer — Developer free, Plus $39/seat. Separate platform.
$0 base (usage-based)
LangGraph Platform — Developer
Deploy LangGraph agents as an API. Free tier — limited execution minutes.
$0 base (usage-based)
LangGraph Platform — Plus
$39/seat/mo (tied to LangSmith Plus). More execution credit. Production features.
$39/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Self-host, dedicated support, SSO.
Custom
LangChain website

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing hobby on Langfuse vs oss on LangChain.

MetricLangfuseLangChain
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

Langfuse · 16 features

  • Annotation QueuesHuman reviewers rate traces. Unlimited on Pro+.
  • DashboardsAggregate metrics, cost, quality across projects.
  • DatasetsCurate test sets from production traces. Run experiments.
  • EU Cloud RegionGDPR-compliant hosting in EU.
  • EvaluationsLLM-as-judge, manual scores, custom model-graded evaluators.
  • LLM Cost TrackingAutomatic cost calculation per provider/model.
  • OpenTelemetry NativeOTel SDK → Langfuse endpoint works out of box.
  • PlaygroundTest prompts + models + variables live.
  • Prompt ManagementVersion, tag, label prompts. Reference from code by label.
  • Public APIFull REST API for ingest, query, prompt management.
  • Python @observe decoratorOne-line decorator to trace any function.
  • Self-HostingDocker Compose + k8s Helm chart.
  • SessionsGroup related traces (conversations, agent runs).
  • TracingCapture every LLM call, tool call, nested span with inputs/outputs/cost.
  • Users TrackingSegment traces by user ID, track per-user cost.
  • WebhooksSubscribe to trace completion events.

LangChain · 18 features

  • AgentsTool-using agents with reasoning loops.
  • Chains (LCEL)LangChain Expression Language — pipe primitives into chains.
  • Checkpointers (LangGraph)Persist agent state to SQL, Mongo, Redis, Postgres.
  • Document Loaders150+ loaders for PDF, HTML, Notion, Google Drive, S3, GitHub, etc.
  • Human-in-the-loopPause agent for approval, then resume.
  • LangGraphStateful graph-based agent runtime. Durable, replayable, human-in-the-loop.
  • LangGraph PlatformManaged hosting for LangGraph agents with state persistence.
  • LangGraph StudioDesktop IDE for debugging agent graphs.
  • LangServeDeploy chains as FastAPI endpoints.
  • MemoryBuffer, summary, entity, vector memory stores.
  • Output ParsersStructured JSON, Pydantic schemas, function calling.
  • Prompt TemplatesTemplating + partial filling + output parsers.
  • RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)Standard patterns + 50+ retrievers.
  • StreamingFirst-class streaming at every layer.
  • SubgraphsCompose agent graphs hierarchically.
  • Text SplittersRecursive, token, semantic splitters for chunking.
  • Tools400+ pre-built tools (web search, code, databases, APIs).
  • Vector Store Integrations60+ vector DBs (Pinecone, Chroma, Weaviate, PGVector, Qdrant, Milvus).

Developer interfaces

KindLangfuseLangChain
SDKlangfuse-js, langfuse-python@langchain/core (Node), langchain (Python), langgraph (JS), langgraph (Python), LangServe
RESTLangfuse REST APILangGraph Platform
MCPLangfuse MCP Server
OTHERLangfuse Dashboard, OpenTelemetry endpoint
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to Langfuse and LangChain are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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