LangChain vs LangGraph: Which Does Your AI Project Need?

The choice is how much workflow control your team needs. LangChain provides a higher-level agent interface. LangGraph gives you direct control over orchestration. Both can support state and human review.

LangChain agents use LangGraph underneath

LangChain’s current create_agent interface runs on LangGraph. It supports persistence and human-in-the-loop behavior, so calling LangChain a forward-only sequence is misleading. The LangChain overview explains the relationship.

When to start with LangChain

• Use its agent interface when a model choosing tools fits your task and the standard loop is sufficient.
• Add middleware for tool policies and review. LangChain’s human-in-the-loop guide shows approval, editing and rejection with checkpointing.
• For a single retrieval-and-answer task, a small pipeline may be enough. Tool autonomy adds behavior you then need to test.

When direct LangGraph orchestration helps

Use LangGraph directly when the application needs explicit transitions, custom branching or a mix of deterministic steps and model decisions. You define the state and control flow rather than fitting them into a standard agent loop. See the LangGraph overview.

A workplace-procedures example

We built the AI core of a workplace-procedures platform with a 12-step investigation and human approval on consequential steps. The case records LangGraph orchestration with LangChain components. Its explicit procedure made direct graph control useful. Human approval alone would not rule out today’s LangChain agent interface. The published case does not record package versions, so it should not be treated as a version-specific implementation guide.

Decide from the workflow

• Write down which decisions belong to code, a model or a person. Include what happens after a failed tool call.
• Check whether the standard agent loop and middleware can express those rules. If they can, start there.
• Use direct graph orchestration when custom transitions are central to the product. Test pause/resume, repeated actions and failure recovery before release.