Braintrust vs LangSmith
Prices and features checked 2026-10-17 on both vendors' own pages. “not verified” means we could not confirm it.
Braintrust or LangSmith? Both are hosted platforms with self-hosting on Enterprise. Braintrust charges by processed data and scores, with unlimited users from the $0 Starter plan and Pro at $249/month. LangSmith charges per seat plus traces: Developer is $0 for one seat and 5k base traces, Plus is $39/seat/month with 10k base traces. Both support OpenTelemetry, CI runs, LLM-as-judge, human review queues, prompt versioning and dataset versions.
| Braintrust | LangSmith | |
|---|---|---|
| Made by | Braintrust Data | LangChain |
| Licence | Hosted service; its autoevals scorer library is MIT [source] | Hosted service; self-hosted and hybrid options on Enterprise [source] |
| Self-hosting | Self-hosted data plane; on-prem or hosted deployment on Enterprise [source] | Self-hosted or hybrid on Enterprise only [source] |
| Meter | Processed data (GB) plus scores, plus model credits at token rates [source] | Seats plus base traces (14-day retention) and extended traces (180-day) [source] |
| Free tier | Starter $0: 1 GB processed data, 10k scores, 14-day retention, unlimited users; then $4/GB and $2.50 per 1k scores [source, checked 2026-10-17] | Developer $0: 1 seat, up to 5k base traces/month, then pay as you go [source, checked 2026-10-17] |
| Entry paid price | Pro $249/month: 5 GB and 50k scores included, then $3/GB and $1.50 per 1k scores; 30-day retention [source, checked 2026-10-17] | Plus $39/seat/month: up to 10k base traces/month, then pay as you go (per-trace rate not stated on the pricing page) [source, checked 2026-10-17] |
| Retention | 14 days (Starter), 30 days (Pro), up to 180 days at $0.50/GB/month [source] | Base traces 14 days; extended traces 180 days (extra fee) [source] |
| OpenTelemetry | Accepts OpenTelemetry traces and logs [source] | OpenTelemetry tracing via OTLP endpoint [source] |
| CI gating | GitHub Actions or the bt eval CLI [source] | pytest and Vitest/Jest integrations that raise assertion errors in CI [source] |
| LLM-as-judge | LLM-as-a-judge and code scorers [source] | LLM-as-a-judge evaluators [source] |
| Human annotation | Human review scores on traces and experiments [source] | Single-run and pairwise annotation queues [source] |
| Prompt management | Prompt version history, restore and compare [source] | Prompt versions, environments and access controls [source] |
| Dataset versioning | Pin dataset versions with snapshots [source] | Every change creates a dataset version; versions can be tagged [source] |
| SOC 2 / HIPAA | SOC 2 Type II listed; BAA for HIPAA on Enterprise [source] | LangChain states it maintains SOC 2 Type II, GDPR and HIPAA compliance [source] |
Verdict: when to use which
Use Braintrust if you have many people reviewing evals (unlimited users on every plan) and your usage is best measured in GB and scores.
Use LangSmith if you build with LangChain or LangGraph and want agent deployment and tracing in one place, or your team is small enough that per-seat pricing stays low.
The meters differ, so price both on a week of your own traffic in the pricing calculator.
FAQ
Which has a better free plan?
Different shapes: Braintrust Starter gives unlimited users, 1 GB processed data and 10k scores with 14-day retention. LangSmith Developer gives 1 seat and 5k base traces with 14-day retention for base traces.
Can I send OpenTelemetry traces to both?
Yes. Both document OpenTelemetry ingestion, and LangSmith documents a Collector fan-out to send the same spans to several backends.
HIPAA?
Braintrust lists a BAA on Enterprise. LangChain states it maintains HIPAA compliance for LangSmith.
More
Other tool comparisons: Braintrust vs Langfuse · Langfuse vs LangSmith · Arize Phoenix vs Langfuse · Comet Opik vs Langfuse · Promptfoo vs DeepEval / Confident AI
Sources
- autoevals repo
- Self-hosting Braintrust
- Braintrust pricing
- Send OpenTelemetry traces
- Run experiments in CI/CD
- LLM-as-a-judge evaluators
- Set up human review
- Version prompts
- Manage datasets
- LangSmith pricing
- Trace with OpenTelemetry
- Run evaluations with pytest
- Define an LLM-as-a-judge evaluator
- Use annotation queues
- Manage prompts
- Manage datasets
- Shared responsibility model