Claude Agent SDK vs DSPy

Pick two tools from the same category to compare side-by-side.

	Claude Agent SDK Anthropic's official SDK for building production agents on Claude.	DSPy Open-source Python framework for programming, rather than prompting, language models.
Category	framework	framework
Vendor type	commercial	open source
Pricing	free	free
Strengths	+ First-class Claude features (prompt caching, extended thinking) + Designed around production agent patterns + Compatible with the Skills standard	+ Declarative, modular programs replace brittle prompt strings + Automatic prompt optimization against a defined metric + Portable across models and providers (uses LiteLLM under the hood) + Research-backed, with an active academic and OSS community
Tradeoffs	− Claude-only (cross-provider needs a gateway like Portkey)	− Optimizer-driven workflow has a distinct learning curve − Compilation and optimization can add cost and iteration time − Less of a turnkey agent runtime than orchestration-focused frameworks
Used in stacks	9	0