"Klarna deployed a multi-agent system using LangSmith for step-by-step trace visibility and test-driven development. The result: 80% faster resolution times and a 70% automation rate across customer service workflows."
LangSmith vs Langfuse: The Langfuse Alternative Built for the Full Agent Lifecycle
Langfuse tracing covers LLM calls. LangSmith covers the complete agent engineering lifecycle: Langfuse-level tracing, production evals including LLM-as-a-judge, and managed deployment that Langfuse doesn't offer. Trusted by 35% of the Fortune 500, including Klarna, Rakuten, Morningstar, and ServiceNow.
LangSmith
vsLangfuse
End-to-end agent lifecycle in one platform: build, observe, evaluate, and deploy. Production traces feed directly back into evals so quality compounds over time.
LangSmith powers top engineering teams
Trusted by the largest builder community in AI
100M+
Monthly open source downloads
6K+
Active LangSmith customers
5
of the Fortune 10
are LangSmith customers
LangSmith Agent Engineering Platform
Observe, evaluate, and deploy agents with LangSmith. LangSmith is framework-agnostic: trace your preferred framework or integrate LangSmith with any agent stack using our Python, TypeScript, Go, or Java SDKs.
Surface and diagnose undetected issues autonomously to improve agents faster. LangSmith Engine clusters production failures into prioritized issues, finds the root cause in your traces and code, and proposes the fix for your review.
Read the announcement
LangSmith vs Langfuse: Full Feature Comparison
Langfuse tracing and prompt management work well for early-stage LLM apps. Teams evaluating Langfuse alternatives find that LangSmith closes the gaps—deeper Langfuse evals, LangChain vs Langfuse native integration, and the managed deployment Langfuse doesn't offer.
Observability and tracing
LangSmithYes
LangfuseYes
Automated production insights
LangSmithYes (Insights Agent)
LangfuseNo
LLM-as-judge Evals
LangSmithYes
LangfuseYes
Online deterministic evals
LangSmithYes
LangfuseOn roadmap only
Annotation Queues
LangSmithYes
LangfuseYes
Queue routing and auto-assignment
LangSmithYes
LangfuseNot documented
Prompt management
LangSmithYes
LangfuseYes
Managed agent deployment
LangSmithYes (LangSmith Deployment)
LangfuseNot offered
Self-hosting
LangSmithEnterprise tier
LangfuseAll tiers
Starting price
LangSmith$0/seat/mo
LangfuseFree (50k units, 2 users)
| Feature | LangSmith | Langfuse |
|---|---|---|
| Observability and tracing | Yes | Yes |
| Automated production insights | Yes (Insights Agent) | No |
| LLM-as-judge Evals | Yes | Yes |
| Online deterministic evals | Yes | On roadmap only |
| Annotation Queues | Yes | Yes |
| Queue routing and auto-assignment | Yes | Not documented |
| Prompt management | Yes | Yes |
| Managed agent deployment | Yes (LangSmith Deployment) | Not offered |
| Self-hosting | Enterprise tier | All tiers |
| Starting price | $0/seat/mo | Free (50k units, 2 users) |
LangSmith is built from the ground up for agentic AI. It works alongside LangChain, LangGraph, and any other framework you choose, giving your team observability, evals, and deployment in a single platform.
Why teams choose LangSmith as their Langfuse alternative
Langfuse tracing and Langfuse docs are solid starting points. But teams evaluating Langfuse review their options when agents reach production scale—and three gaps consistently emerge.
Langfuse evals lack deterministic online checks
Langfuse evaluation docs confirm online deterministic checks are on the roadmap but not in GA. LangSmith runs both LLM-as-a-judge and rule-based evals on live production traffic today. If Langfuse LLM-as-a-judge coverage gaps are slowing your team, LangSmith has the full evaluation toolkit ready now.
Langfuse tracing has no queue routing logic
Langfuse's Annotation Queues lack routing rules or priority-based distribution. As review volume scales, manual queue management becomes a bottleneck—a gap that teams switching from Langfuse vs Braintrust or Langfuse vs Arize consistently cite. LangSmith routes high-risk outputs first and load-balances work automatically.
Langfuse self hosted lacks managed agent runtime
Whether you need Langfuse self hosted or Langfuse enterprise pricing on cloud, neither option includes infrastructure for running stateful AI agents in production. LangSmith Deployment provides managed runtime with task queues, human-in-the-loop pauses, and horizontal scaling—what Langfuse vs LangGraph comparisons miss.
"Podium's team used LangSmith's evaluation workflows to reach a 98.6% F1 score on their AI agent. They reduced engineering intervention by 90% through systematic evals and dataset curation powered by production traces."
Podium Engineering Team
Podium
What leading teams build with LangSmith
"What we really needed was a more structured way to test new approaches, something better than just shipping and seeing what happened. LangSmith gave us a more scientific, structured way to understand what was actually working, whether that meant running pairwise evaluations or digging into why accuracy jumped from 70% to 80%."
Switching from Langfuse to LangSmith: the Langfuse alternative migration
Day 1
Tracing live
LangSmith preserves your existing instrumentation because it is framework agnostic and supports OpenTelemetry ingestion. Add the traceable wrapper to any Python or JS/TS application. Most teams capture their first traces within a day.
Week 1
Datasets migrated, evals configured
Export datasets from Langfuse and import them into LangSmith to maintain your existing test coverage. Configure LLM-as-judge and deterministic evaluators to match your quality criteria.
Week 2
Full production monitoring
Set up Annotation Queues with routing rules for structured human review, configure online evals for live production traffic, and optionally set up managed deployment for your LangGraph agents. LangSmith Plus and Enterprise tiers include dedicated migration support.
Enterprise-ready security and control
Run production agents with the compliance, deployment, and access controls large organizations require.
Granular permissions
Role-based access and project isolation support enterprise governance.
Self-hosted deployment
Maintain control over AI data with enterprise self-hosting options.
Meet us at an upcoming event
Join the LangChain community to learn how teams are building production agents.
Get a Demo of LangSmith
See how LangSmith compares to Langfuse for tracing, evals, and managed deployment. Talk to our team.