Microsoft AutoGen

AutoGen is Microsoft’s open-source framework for building conversational multi-agent AI systems that talk, collaborate and solve tasks together.

Overview

AutoGen provides an event-driven programming model where agents are conversational actors that send messages, invoke tools and coordinate work. Its core abstractions make it easy to build two-agent chats, group chats with dynamic speaker selection, and workflows that mix humans and models.

The framework supports code execution in secure containers, structured outputs, model-agnostic backends and rich logging for debugging agent conversations. As an early mover in multi-agent research and now maintained as a community-driven project, AutoGen underpins many academic prototypes and production agent experiments alike. AutoGen Studio adds a low-code surface for prototyping conversational agent teams before writing production code. The project ships detailed documentation and reference architectures that make it easier to move from experiments to running systems. Its event-driven model also makes agent behavior straightforward to log, replay and reason about during debugging.

Key Features

• Conversational multi-agent programming model
• Dynamic group chat with automatic speaker selection
• Secure code execution for agents that write and run code
• Model-agnostic: works with OpenAI, Azure, local and custom models
• Telemetry and debugging tools for agent conversations
• Extensible agent types and tool integrations
• Caching and cost controls that keep long experimental conversations affordable

Pricing

AutoGen is open source under a permissive license and completely free to use. Costs come only from the models and infrastructure you run it on, and it can be deployed on Azure or any cloud, with no licensing fees. Running models locally with tools such as Ollama makes experimentation effectively free. Costs are limited to model inference and compute, and academic teams routinely run large experiments on minimal budgets.

Who Is It For

AutoGen suits researchers and engineers exploring multi-agent collaboration, code-generation pipelines and human-in-the-loop workflows. It is a natural choice for teams already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem or Azure OpenAI services. It also suits students and researchers learning multi-agent design, thanks to excellent documentation and approachable examples.

FAQ

Is Microsoft AutoGen free to use?

Yes, AutoGen is free and open source. You only pay for model inference and compute, whether from a cloud provider or locally hosted models.

Does Microsoft AutoGen offer an API?

AutoGen is a library rather than a hosted service, so you embed it in your own applications and expose whatever APIs you build around it. Reference architectures show how to serve agent systems behind REST endpoints.

How does Microsoft AutoGen compare to alternatives?

AutoGen offers strong research pedigree and flexible conversational abstractions, while alternatives like LangGraph emphasize graph-shaped control and CrewAI emphasizes roles. AutoGen is a good pick when agent-to-agent conversation itself is the design primitive. AutoGen is strongest when conversation between agents is the mechanism you want to study, debug or ship. Teams pick AutoGen when they want research-grade flexibility and a proven conversational model, accepting that production hardening is largely their own responsibility.