RelayPlane vs. LangChain

LangChain is one of the most popular tools for building LLM apps. It provides an abstraction layer to define chains, manage memory, and orchestrate agents.

RelayPlane is something different: it's the infrastructure layer that helps you run those chains and agents reliably in production.

If LangChain is the brain of your agent system, RelayPlane is the nervous system.

What LangChain Does Well

LangChain is a development framework with powerful tools:

• Define multi-step chains and workflows
• Memory and context management
• Integrates with vector stores, tools, retrievers
• Agent behavior abstraction

Great for prototyping, experimentation, and custom logic.

What RelayPlane Solves

RelayPlane isn't an agent framework. It doesn't define how agents think—it defines how they talk to each other. And how your system handles that at scale.

🔌 Unified Relay Layer

• Call any model or agent via a single API
• Supports A2A (agent-to-agent) and MCP (multi-call) workflows

🔍 Observability, Cost Control, and Reliability

• Full request/response logs
• Cost metering and usage tracking per model/agent
• Built-in retry logic, fallback routing, and caching

🧩 Plug Into LangChain (Soon)

• Use RelayPlane as your model I/O layer
• Run LangChain agents through Relay for built-in logging + vendor fallback

Analogy: Server vs. SDK

Think of it like this:

• LangChain is like React—it helps you build.
• RelayPlane is like Vercel—it helps you deploy and run at scale.

You can use them together. In fact, they're better together.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature	LangChain	RelayPlane
Agent abstraction + memory	✅	❌
Unified API across models	❌	✅
Retry, fallback, caching	❌	✅
Built-in logging & metrics	❌	✅
Plugin SDK for routing logic	❌	✅ (coming)
Multi-call workflows (MCP)	Limited	✅
BYO model keys	✅	✅

When to Use Which

Use LangChain when you're building agent brains. Use RelayPlane when you're ready to run them with production-grade infrastructure, vendor-agnostic routing, and full observability.

Or better yet—use both.

Getting Started

Add RelayPlane to your LangChain stack in minutes. Swap in the Relay SDK for your model calls and gain:

• Logging
• Usage dashboards
• Failover + retries

Join the Waitlist

Ready to make your LangChain agents production-ready? Join the RelayPlane early access program.

Got questions? Reach out on X @relayplaneai.