connic vs LangSmith Deployment
YAML agents or a LangGraph-first runtime

LangSmith Deployment hosts LangGraph agents, and agents from other frameworks through wrappers. connic hosts agents defined in YAML with Python tools, and starts them from queues, inboxes and databases.

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Sources and methodologyLast reviewed October 14, 2026

connic and LangSmith Deployment at a glance
connic		LangSmith
Built as
Managed agent platform	Built as	Managed runtime, LangGraph-first
Agents and tools
YAML and Python	Agents and tools	LangGraph code and langgraph.json
Event triggers
Kafka, SQS, email, Postgres and more	Event triggers	HTTP API, cron jobs and MCP
Live A/B tests
Built in	Live A/B tests	Built in your app
Guardrails
Run by the platform	Guardrails	Middleware in agent code
Self-hosting
Enterprise plan	Self-hosting	Hybrid or self-hosted on Enterprise
Contract partner
German company	Contract partner	US company, EU region on all plans

The short answer

LangSmith Deployment suits teams whose agents are built with LangGraph or LangChain and who already trace and evaluate in LangSmith. connic suits teams that want agents defined in YAML with Python tools, started by queues, inboxes and databases, and released after a test on live traffic.

Use connic when

Your agents should be YAML and plain Python functions, without a graph framework
Kafka, SQS, email, Stripe or Postgres events should start agents
New versions should prove themselves on live traffic first
Guardrails should run on the platform for every request
You need an EU contract partner as well as EU hosting

Use LangSmith when

Your agents are built with LangGraph or LangChain
You run agents from several frameworks, such as CrewAI or Google ADK, on one runtime
LangSmith tracing and evals already anchor your workflow
You need a hybrid setup with the data plane in your own cloud
A US contract partner with an EU region meets your requirements

Where connic and LangSmith Deployment differ

What each platform does in the areas that usually decide an evaluation.

How agents are built

An agent is a YAML file with its model, prompt and tools. Custom tools are Python functions, and apps in any language call the agent over HTTP or WebSocket.

Agents are LangGraph graphs or LangChain agents in Python or TypeScript, listed in langgraph.json. Other frameworks run through the Functional API or a wrapper SDK.

What starts a run

Connectors for Kafka, SQS, email, Postgres, Stripe, webhooks, cron, Slack and more, defined in code or in the dashboard.

Calls to the deployment's HTTP API, cron jobs and MCP. Kafka, SQS, email, Stripe and Postgres triggers are not documented.

Releasing a new version

Built-in A/B tests send a share of live traffic to a variant and compare success rate, judge scores, cost and latency.

Revisions, redeploys on push and preview builds for pull requests, in beta. Assistants serve the configuration your code requests, and the traffic split is yours to build.

Tracing and evals

Span-by-span traces on every paid plan. Judges score sampled production runs against a rubric.

Mature tracing, offline experiments and online evaluators. Engine flags recurring failures in production traces.

Guardrails and approvals

Input and output checks run on the platform for every run. Approvals pause a tool call until a reviewer decides.

PII and human-in-the-loop middleware in agent code, with interrupts that resume the thread. The LLM Gateway, in beta, can redact PII and secrets before a model call.

Hosting

Managed runtime with environments on every paid plan. Self-hosting on enterprise.

Cloud deployments from the Plus plan, serverless or dedicated. Hybrid and self-hosted options on Enterprise.

EU and contract

Platform data and connic/* inference stay in the EU. The contract partner is a German company.

The EU instance in the Netherlands is open on every plan and covers deployments. The contract partner is LangChain Inc. in the US, with no EU entity.

Pricing

Developer and pro start at €40 and €200 per month, and the plan amount becomes Project credit at published base rates.

Plus costs $39 per seat per month. Deployment compute, Engine and Fleet usage are metered in LSUs at $1 each.

The same agent in connic and LangSmith Deployment

A claims agent with one tool that looks up a policy. In connic it is a YAML file and a Python function. On LangSmith Deployment it is a LangChain agent, which runs as a LangGraph graph, plus a langgraph.json that points the server to it.

connic

agents/claims-intake.yaml

name: claims-intake
model: connic/gpt-5.6-sol
system_prompt: Check the policy first.
tools:
  - policies.lookup_policy

tools/policies.py

import os
import httpx

API = os.environ["POLICY_API_URL"]

async def lookup_policy(policy_id: str) -> dict:
    """Look up a policy by number.

    Args:
        policy_id: Policy number from the claim
    """
    url = f"{API}/policies/{policy_id}"
    async with httpx.AsyncClient() as client:
        response = await client.get(url)
        return response.json()

LangSmith

src/agent.py

import os
import httpx
from langchain.agents import create_agent
from langchain.tools import tool

API = os.environ["POLICY_API_URL"]

@tool
def lookup_policy(policy_id: str) -> dict:
    """Look up a policy by number.

    Args:
        policy_id: Policy number from the claim
    """
    response = httpx.get(f"{API}/policies/{policy_id}")
    return response.json()

agent = create_agent(
    model="openai:gpt-5.6-sol",
    tools=[lookup_policy],
    system_prompt="Check the policy first.",
)

langgraph.json

{
  "dependencies": ["."],
  "graphs": {
    "claims_intake": "./src/agent.py:agent"
  },
  "env": ".env"
}

connic vs LangSmith Deployment, feature by feature

Each row is scored from connic's and LangSmith's public documentation. The methodology and sources follow the table.

YesFull support
PartialLimited, beta or extra setup
NoNot available

Feature	connic	LangSmith
Framework & design
Deploys agents built with other frameworksLangSmith Deployment runs LangGraph and LangChain agents directly, and Claude Agent SDK, CrewAI, AutoGen, Strands or Google ADK agents through the Functional API or a wrapper SDK. connic runs its own YAML agents, and connic migrate converts LangChain projects.	No	Yes
YAML-based agent configconnic defines agents in YAML with Python tools. LangSmith deployments are code: a LangGraph graph that langgraph.json points to.	Yes	No
Agents without framework codeconnic tools are plain Python functions with a docstring. LangSmith's direct path is LangGraph, with graphs and state or create_agent, and other frameworks add a Functional API wrapper.	Yes	Partial
MCP supportBoth expose agents over MCP and let agents use MCP servers as tools.	Yes	Yes
EU & compliance
Managed EU data residencyconnic keeps platform data and connic/* inference in the EU. LangSmith's EU instance in the Netherlands is open on every plan and covers traces, run data and deployments.	Yes	Yes
EU contract partnerconnic contracts through a German company. LangSmith contracts through LangChain Inc., a Delaware corporation, and has no EU entity for customer contracts.	Yes	No
EU AI Act toolingconnic maps execution logs, approvals and guardrails to deployer obligations, and its AI Governance workspace on enterprise records AI systems, assessments and evidence. A LangChain guide from April 2026 maps LangSmith tracing, evaluators and human-in-the-loop to articles of the Act.	Yes	Partial
Deployment & operations
Git-based deploymentsBoth deploy from source. LangSmith Deployment builds from a GitHub repository, can redeploy on every push, and also deploys with the langgraph CLI.	Yes	Yes
Managed hostingconnic hosts agents on every paid plan. LangSmith Deployment needs Plus or Enterprise; Plus includes one small serverless deployment, and further compute is billed in LSUs.	Yes	Yes
Self-hosted or hybrid optionLangSmith offers hybrid and self-hosted deployment on Enterprise, plus a standalone Agent Server that runs with a license key. connic offers self-hosting on enterprise.	Partial	Yes
Environment management (dev, staging, prod)connic has dev, staging and prod environments with their own variables, connectors and data on every paid plan. LangSmith uses a separate deployment per Git branch, and preview builds for pull requests are in public beta.	Yes	Partial
Integrations & triggers
Webhook triggersconnic's webhook connector starts runs from inbound requests. LangSmith deployments expose an HTTP API and send a webhook when a run completes; other inbound events need a route you add.	Yes	Partial
Cron schedulingBoth run agents on a schedule.	Yes	Yes
Message queues (Kafka, SQS)connic's Kafka and SQS connectors consume and publish messages. LangSmith's deployment docs describe no Kafka or SQS trigger.	Yes	No
Email triggersconnic's email connector starts runs from an inbox and can send results by email. LangSmith Deployment documents no email trigger for deployed agents. Fleet, LangSmith's no-code agent product, has a Gmail channel.	Yes	No
Stripe event triggersconnic has a Stripe connector. LangSmith's deployment docs describe no Stripe trigger.	Yes	No
Postgres event triggersconnic's Postgres connector starts runs from NOTIFY events, so a table trigger can start an agent. LangSmith Deployment uses Postgres for its own state and documents no Postgres trigger.	Yes	No
Observability & evals
Tracing and run historyBoth trace every run. LangSmith's tracing is mature and covers LangChain, LangGraph and other frameworks.	Yes	Yes
Tracing included in the planconnic includes tracing on every paid plan. LangSmith includes 5,000 base traces a month on Developer and 10,000 on Plus, and bills usage above that.	Yes	Partial
Built-in judges and evalsBoth score agent output. LangSmith has offline experiments, online evaluators and Engine, which flags recurring failures in production traces. connic's judges score sampled production runs against a rubric.	Yes	Yes
A/B testing with traffic splitsconnic splits live traffic between agent versions and compares them with statistics. LangSmith assistants serve the configuration your code requests, and the docs list A/B tests as a use, so your application implements the split.	Yes	Partial
Pricing
Not billed per seatconnic developer and pro start at €40 and €200 per month, and adding teammates does not change the plan. LangSmith Plus costs $39 per seat per month plus usage.	Yes	No
Plan fee becomes usage creditconnic turns the plan amount into Project credit, used at published base rates before package discounts: €0.0337 per started LLM-agent run, €0.00042 per runtime second and €0.00342 per GB-hour of storage. LangSmith meters deployment compute in LSUs at $1 each, on top of seat fees.	Yes	No

Methodology

We compare generally available capabilities documented in each vendor's product, pricing, security, and legal material. Yes means documented support, Partial means limited scope, beta or preview status, or additional setup, and No means unavailable or not documented in the sources reviewed. connic capabilities are checked against current product documentation, and roadmap claims are not scored.

LSU usage depends on the workload. A No means the capability is not in LangSmith's public documentation, and beta features such as preview builds and the LLM Gateway are marked as beta.

Last reviewed October 14, 2026 by the connic research team.

Primary sources

Other platforms on the shortlist

Head-to-head comparisons against the platforms most teams weigh alongside connic. For the full field, survey the 2026 agent deployment platform landscape or browse all comparisons.

connic vs VercelTypeScript agent infrastructure built around the AI SDK, eve, AI Gateway, Workflows, Sandbox, and regional Queues. Compute, workflow state, queue persistence, and model inference can use EU regions, while end-to-end residency still depends on gateway processing, providers, configured services, and failover behavior.connic vs n8nGerman workflow-automation platform with LangChain-based agent nodes, evaluations, guardrails, and approvals. It is strongest at visual process automation; connic treats the agent as the versioned, deployed, and metered unit.connic vs MastraTypeScript agent framework with self-hosting and a managed platform that can pin the server, hosted database, and observability data to an EU region. connic provides a Python and YAML operating model with managed connectors and governance controls.connic vs Inngest + AgentKitDurable-execution platform with a JavaScript and TypeScript agent framework, evals, experiments, and human-in-the-loop workflow patterns. Managed Cloud database data is US-hosted; self-hosting is the documented residency alternative.connic vs AgentuityAgentuity, a managed platform for AI agents, was discontinued in 2026. This page maps its agents, triggers, storage, evals and hosting to connic for teams moving their agents.connic vs Trigger.devOpen-source, Git-first background-job platform with AI tasks, HITL patterns, Realtime, and LLM usage metrics. EU run execution does not relocate payloads or logs; complete residency requires self-hosting or a confirmed private deployment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, for teams that want agents defined in YAML with Python tools instead of LangGraph code. connic includes event connectors, judges, guardrails, approvals and live A/B tests, and keeps platform data and connic/* inference in the EU under a German contract.

Yes. LangSmith's EU instance runs in the Netherlands, is open on every plan and covers traces, run data and deployments. Managed deployments need Plus or Enterprise. Managed Deep Agents, in public beta since August 2026, run only in the US region. LangChain Inc. in the US is the contract partner, as it has no EU entity, and model providers need their own review. The EU data residency shortlist compares the other platforms on the same points, and the EU AI Act mapping shows which connic features support deployer obligations.

Deployment needs the Plus plan at $39 per seat per month, which includes one small serverless deployment. Further deployment compute and memory are metered in LSUs at $1 each, and Enterprise is custom, with hybrid and self-hosted options. connic developer and pro start at €40 and €200 per month, and the plan amount becomes Project credit.

Yes. LangChain agents deploy directly, since they run on LangGraph. Claude Agent SDK, CrewAI, AutoGen and Strands agents run through the LangGraph Functional API, and Google ADK agents through a wrapper SDK. The server still serves each one as a LangGraph graph.

connic migrate scans a LangChain project for create_agent and create_react_agent calls and generates YAML agents with Python tools, plus a report of what needs manual work. LangGraph state graphs become sequential agents or custom tools by hand. The LangChain migration guide covers the mapping.

connic vs LangSmith DeploymentYAML agents or a LangGraph-first runtime