# OpenLIT vs LangSmith

LangSmith is LangChain's proprietary observability platform. OpenLIT is framework-agnostic, fully open-source (Apache 2.0), and works with any LLM provider or orchestration framework.

| Feature | OpenLIT | LangSmith |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Core Architecture |  |  |
| OpenTelemetry-native |  |  |
| Open Source | Apache 2.0 |  |
| Self-hostable |  | Enterprise plan only |
| Framework-agnostic |  | Best with LangChain; supports others via SDK |
| Free self-hosted tier |  |  |
| LLM Monitoring |  |  |
| Token usage tracking |  |  |
| Cost per request |  |  |
| Latency / p95 metrics |  |  |
| Prompt & response logging |  |  |
| 60+ integrations (LLMs, frameworks, VectorDBs, GPUs) |  | Primarily via LangChain wrappers |
| Infrastructure Monitoring |  |  |
| GPU monitoring (NVIDIA + AMD) |  |  |
| Vector DB tracing |  |  |
| Multi-environment tagging |  |  |
| Organisation management |  |  |
| Developer Tools |  |  |
| Prompt Hub (versioning) |  |  |
| Evaluations |  |  |
| Secrets Vault |  |  |
| Fleet Hub (multi-deployment) |  |  |
| Custom model pricing |  |  |
| Prompt playground |  |  |
| Dataset management for evals |  |  |
| Pricing |  |  |
| Free tier | Unlimited traces (self-hosted) | 5,000 traces/month |
| No credit card to start |  |  |
| Self-hosted free tier |  |  |
| Data ownership | Full (self-hosted) | LangChain cloud |

## Choose OpenLIT when…

- You are not using LangChain and want framework-agnostic, auto-instrumented observability
- You need to self-host for data privacy, compliance, or cost control without an Enterprise plan
- You need GPU monitoring for locally-hosted models on NVIDIA or AMD hardware
- You want unlimited traces on self-hosted infrastructure at zero licensing cost
- You require OpenTelemetry compatibility to route data to Grafana, Datadog, or other backends

## Choose LangSmith when…

- Your stack is deeply integrated with LangChain and you want first-class toolchain support
- You need LangSmith's prompt playground and dataset management for systematic eval workflows
- You are comfortable with cloud-only and want a managed service without any ops overhead

### More Comparisons

- [OpenLIT vs Langfuse](/content/compare/openlit-vs-langfuse/index.html) 
- [OpenLIT vs Helicone](/content/compare/openlit-vs-helicone/index.html) 
- [OpenLIT vs Datadog](/content/compare/openlit-vs-datadog/index.html)