Staxly

LangSmith vs Temporal

LLM observability, testing & evaluation — by LangChain
vs. Durable execution platform for mission-critical workflows

LangSmith websiteTemporal website

Pricing tiers

LangSmith

Developer (Free)
Free forever. 5,000 traces/month. 14-day retention. 1 seat. Basic evaluations.
Free
Plus
$39/seat/month. 10k base traces included ($2.50 per 1k overage). Full evaluations, custom dashboards, email support.
$39/mo
Enterprise
Custom. Self-host option, SSO, custom retention, dedicated support.
Custom
LangSmith website

Temporal

Self-Hosted (OSS)
Free forever. MIT license. Run the Temporal cluster yourself on K8s/Docker.
$0 base (usage-based)
Cloud (usage-based)
Temporal Cloud. Pay per action ($25 per 1M actions base). Active user + storage also billed.
$0 base (usage-based)
Business Plan
Starts ~$100/mo commit. Multi-region, SSO, priority support.
Custom
Enterprise
Custom. HIPAA, PCI, dedicated clusters, enterprise SLA.
Custom
Temporal website

Free-tier quotas head-to-head

Comparing developer on LangSmith vs oss on Temporal.

MetricLangSmithTemporal
No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers.

Features

LangSmith · 14 features

  • AlertsThreshold alerts on latency, cost, eval metrics.
  • Annotation QueuesHuman-review workflows for trace quality rating.
  • Custom DashboardsAggregate metrics dashboards per project/tag.
  • DatasetsCollect examples → use as eval sets or training data.
  • EvaluationsLLM-as-judge, embedding similarity, custom Python evaluators, offline batch eval
  • LangChain IntegrationAuto-trace any LangChain/LangGraph run with env var.
  • LangGraph IntegrationFirst-class trace + eval for LangGraph agents.
  • LLM TracingAutomatic trace every LLM call + tool call + chain step.
  • OpenTelemetry ExportExport traces as OTLP to Datadog/Honeycomb/etc.
  • PlaygroundTest prompts + models inline before deploying.
  • Prompt CanvasVisual prompt editor with live test + eval.
  • Prompt HubPublic + private prompt library with versioning.
  • Self-Hosted (Enterprise)Docker + k8s deployment in your infra.
  • Threads + SessionsGroup traces into conversational sessions.

Temporal · 16 features

  • ActivitiesRetryable units of work.
  • Activity RetriesDeclarative retry policies.
  • Child WorkflowsNested workflow composition.
  • Continue-As-NewClose + restart workflow to prune history.
  • Nexus (cross-namespace)Call workflows across namespaces/teams.
  • QueriesSynchronous read of workflow state.
  • Saga / CompensationsRollback pattern via compensating activities.
  • SchedulesCron-like recurring workflows.
  • Self-HostDeploy cluster on your infra.
  • SignalsAsync messages into a running workflow.
  • TimersDurable sleeps — hours, days, months.
  • UpdateSynchronous RPC into workflow with validation.
  • Visibility + Search AttrsQuery workflow state via Elasticsearch/native store.
  • Web UIInspect workflow history, events, stack.
  • WorkflowsDurable, replayable, long-running functions.
  • Workflow VersioningPatch workflow code without breaking in-flight runs.

Developer interfaces

KindLangSmithTemporal
CLILangSmith CLItemporal CLI
SDKlangsmith-js, langsmith-pythonTemporal Go SDK, temporalio (Python), @temporalio (TypeScript), Temporal Java SDK, Temporal .NET SDK, Temporal PHP SDK
RESTLangSmith REST API
MCPLangSmith MCP
OTHERLangSmith DashboardTemporal gRPC API, Temporal Web UI
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Outbound links to LangSmith and Temporal are plain references to their official websites. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.

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