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Software Development · head to head

Factory vs LangSmith

Factory logo

Factory

Software Development

The autonomy stack for enterprise teams

From
$20/month
Rated
-
LangSmith logo

LangSmith

Software Development

Know what your agents are really doing

From
Free
Rated
-

The short version

  • Only LangSmith has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Factory business and Enterprise plans require direct sales contact for pricing; LangSmith usage-based pricing applies beyond included traces; LCU charges at $1.50/LCU and LSU at $1.00/LSU
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 29 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Factory and LangSmith actually diverge.

Attributes where Factory and LangSmith differ
AttributeFactoryLangSmith
Starting price$20/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionfreemium
Free tierNoYes

Identical on both: platforms (Web), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Software Development).

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Factory

  • AI agent development and deploymentnot LangSmith
  • Multi-platform automationnot LangSmith
  • Background task executionnot LangSmith
  • Agent orchestrationnot LangSmith

LangSmith

  • Tracing agent execution step-by-step in productionnot Factory
  • Detecting agent failures affecting latency and costnot Factory
  • Monitoring token usage and latency percentilesnot Factory
  • Clustering traces to identify failure modesnot Factory
  • Self-hosting traces within VPC for data residencynot Factory

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Factory

  • Business and Enterprise plans require direct sales contact for pricing
  • Individual plans (Pro, Plus, Max) have limited feature details

LangSmith

  • Usage-based pricing applies beyond included traces; LCU charges at $1.50/LCU and LSU at $1.00/LSU
  • Free tier limited to 1 seat and 5,000 traces per month

Pricing, plan by plan

Factory

$20/month
  • Pro$20/month
    • Agent-native multi-platform experience
    • Desktop, CLI, and SDK access
    • Cloud and local background agents
  • Plus$100/month
    • Everything in Pro
    • Approximately 5x usage limits
    • Droid Computers for remote agents
  • Max$200/month
    • Everything in Plus
    • Approximately 10x usage limits
    • Early access to new features
  • Business$null/mo

LangSmith

Free
  • DeveloperFree
    • 1 seat maximum
    • 5,000 base traces monthly
  • Plus$39/month
    • Unlimited seats
    • 10,000 base traces monthly
    • 1 free small serverless deployment
  • Enterprise$null/mo
    • Custom pricing
    • Self-hosted and hybrid options
    • Custom SSO, ABAC, RBAC

Which should you pick?

Choose Factory if

Nothing in the data separates Factory from LangSmith on the points above - pick on price and on how each one feels to use.

Choose LangSmith if

  • You want to start without paying.

Questions people ask

Is Factory or LangSmith better?
Neither clearly leads. Factory starts at $20/month and LangSmith at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Factory or LangSmith?
LangSmith has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $20/month for Factory and Free for LangSmith.
Does Factory or LangSmith run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use LangSmith for free?
Yes. LangSmith has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Factory starts at $20/month.
What is Factory best used for?
Factory is most often used for ai agent development and deployment, multi-platform automation, background task execution, agent orchestration. Of those, ai agent development and deployment and multi-platform automation are not what LangSmith is typically brought in for.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Factory: What is Factory.ai's pricing?

Factory.ai offers individual plans starting at USD$20 per month for Pro, USD$100 per month for Plus, and USD$200 per month for Max. Team plans including Business and Enterprise tiers are available at custom pricing based on the number of seats required.

Source
LangSmith: What does LangSmith cost?

LangSmith Developer plan is free with up to 5,000 base traces monthly. Plus plan costs $39/month per seat with 10,000 base traces included. Enterprise pricing is custom.

Source
Factory: What are the usage limits for each plan?

The Pro plan is the baseline tier. Plus provides approximately 5 times the usage limits of Pro, while Max provides approximately 10 times the usage limits of Pro. Exact usage limits are not specified on the pricing page.

Source
LangSmith: How does LangSmith usage-based pricing work?

Beyond included traces, LangSmith charges $1.50 per LCU (LangChain Compute Unit) for computational work and $1.00 per LSU (LangChain Storage Unit) for data storage.

Source
Factory: What AI models are included with Factory.ai?

All Factory.ai plans include access to GPT-5, Claude Opus and Sonnet, Google Gemini, and open-weight models. Business and Enterprise plans also include dedicated compute with partitioned inference and options for on-premise deployment.

Source
LangSmith: Is there a free tier for LangSmith?

Yes, the Developer plan is free with limits on seat count (1 seat maximum) and trace volume (5,000 base traces per month).

Source
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