AutoGen by Microsoft
Microsoft's open-source multi-agent framework, now in maintenance mode
Overview
AutoGen is Microsoft's open-source framework for multi-agent LLM applications: conversational agents, group chats, tool use and sandboxed code execution, plus the AutoGen Studio prototyping UI. It is now in maintenance mode, receives no new features and is community managed; Microsoft recommends Microsoft Agent Framework (1.0 in April 2026) for new projects.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 12 Oct 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
Use cases
What you can produce with AutoGen by Microsoft
- Conversing LLM agents defined in Python, such as a coder and a reviewer
- Group chats that route a problem among specialist agents
- Code execution in Docker or local executors with error feedback
- Human-in-the-loop approval steps
- AutoGen Studio web UI for prototyping agent teams
- Custom tools and function calls for APIs, files and databases
- A migration path to Microsoft Agent Framework
AutoGen helped make multi-agent LLM programming practical, with conversational agents, group-chat orchestration, tool calls and sandboxed code execution, and it still installs and runs under the MIT licence.
It is now in maintenance mode, with no new features planned. That makes it a sound teaching resource and a reasonable choice only for existing deployments. New production work belongs on Microsoft Agent Framework, or on the AG2 fork for teams that want the classic AutoGen programming model.
What we found
AutoGen was one of the frameworks that made multi-agent LLM programming concrete. Its 2023 paper and code showed two or more agents conversing, calling tools and executing code to finish a task, and later versions added an event-driven core, the AgentChat API and the AutoGen Studio prototyping interface. That history is still worth knowing, but the project's status has changed and has to come first.
The repository README now carries a maintenance-mode notice: AutoGen will receive no new features or enhancements and is community managed going forward. Microsoft points new users to Microsoft Agent Framework, which it introduced in public preview on 1 October 2025 as a convergence of AutoGen and Semantic Kernel, and which reached 1.0 for Python and .NET on 2 April 2026. Agent Framework has shipped regular releases since; AutoGen's last Python release, v0.7.5, dates from 30 September 2025, and its recent commits are security hardening and the notice itself.
None of this stops AutoGen from working. The code remains MIT-licensed, with documentation under CC BY 4.0, the packages install from PyPI, and the examples still teach group-chat, tool-use and human-in-the-loop patterns clearly. What a team gives up is a roadmap: the community may fix bugs, but nothing new is planned, and the earlier rewrite from v0.2 to v0.4 already forced one migration on early adopters. Microsoft publishes a migration guide from AutoGen to Agent Framework for the next.
There is also a separate fork. AG2, run by original AutoGen authors Chi Wang and Qingyun Wu, describes itself as formerly AutoGen, is Apache-2.0 licensed and releases actively; its classic AutoGen-style API now lives in a separate repository.
Choose AutoGen only to study multi-agent patterns or to maintain an existing deployment. New work in Microsoft's ecosystem should start on Agent Framework, and teams attached to the classic programming model should evaluate AG2.
Compiled by RECATOOLS from public sources: vendor documentation and pricing, code repositories and published reporting.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including AutoGen by Microsoft's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with AutoGen by Microsoft unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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