--- title: "coding.sh vs LangSmith: an open-source, self-hosted option" description: "LangSmith is a hosted platform; coding.sh is MIT licensed and runs on your machine. A feature table, and where each one is the better choice." canonical: https://coding.sh/docs/compare/langsmith human_url: https://coding.sh/docs/compare/langsmith markdown_url: https://coding.sh/docs/compare/langsmith.md agents_url: https://coding.sh/agents.md llms_url: https://coding.sh/llms.txt updated: 2026-11-11 --- # coding.sh vs LangSmith LangSmith is a hosted platform; coding.sh is MIT licensed and runs on your machine. A feature table, and where each one is the better choice. LangSmith is LangChain's hosted platform for tracing, evaluating and monitoring LLM applications and agents. Its SDKs are open source; the platform is not, and self-hosting it is an Enterprise add-on. coding.sh is an MIT-licensed CLI and local viewer that records AI agents on your machine, with coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex captured through their hooks. Checked against LangSmith's docs on 7 November 2026. Sources are at the end of the page. If something here is out of date, open an issue. ## At a glance | | coding.sh | LangSmith | | --- | --- | --- | | License | MIT, all of it | SDKs MIT; the platform is closed | | Hosted cloud | No | Yes, with a free Developer plan | | Self-host | Yes: a laptop, or one `coding.sh serve` container | Enterprise add-on on Kubernetes | | Claude Code and Codex capture | Hooks, installed by `coding.sh init` | Hook plugins | | Other coding agents | Cursor, OpenCode, Copilot CLI, Amp, Goose and more ([list](https://coding.sh/docs/agents)) | Cursor, Copilot and OpenCode | | Sessions from before you installed it | Yes, `coding.sh ingest --backfill` | Not found in their docs | | OpenTelemetry ingest | Yes, a local OTLP/HTTP receiver | Yes | | Cost tracking | Yes | Yes | | Datasets, experiments, LLM judges | Yes | Yes | | Paired statistics on two runs (bootstrap interval) | Yes, `coding.sh exp compare` | Not found in their docs | | Replay a coding session step by step, with files | Yes, `coding.sh replay` | No | | Online evals on live traffic | No | Yes | | Human annotation queues, including pairwise | No | Yes | | Failure clustering across traces | No | Yes (Insights, on paid plans) | | Alerts | No | Yes: Slack, PagerDuty, webhooks | | SSO, SCIM, RBAC, audit logs | No | Enterprise | | Test runner integration | `exp compare --gate` exit code in CI | pytest, Vitest and Jest | | MCP server | Yes, local | Yes, hosted | ## Where LangSmith is better - A hosted team workspace. Nothing to run, traces from production and from every developer in one place, and enterprise controls when you need them. - Production monitoring. Online evaluators, alerts to Slack or PagerDuty, and clustering that groups similar failures across many traces. - Human review. Annotation queues, including pairwise comparison of two outputs. - LangChain and LangGraph. Tracing for those frameworks needs almost no setup. - Test frameworks. Evals can run inside pytest, Vitest or Jest. If your team builds on LangChain or LangGraph and wants a managed platform, LangSmith fits better than coding.sh. ## Where coding.sh is better - Open source and local. The whole tool is MIT licensed. Traces stay in `~/.coding.sh` on your machine, there is no account, and nothing is sent anywhere unless you add a sink. - Self-hosting without an Enterprise plan. A team server is one `coding.sh serve` process on SQLite, or on Postgres or ClickHouse through a store plugin. See [Self-host for a team](https://coding.sh/docs/how-to/self-host-team). - Coding agents first. Hooks for more than ten coding agents, subagents linked to their parent session, and past sessions imported from the agents' own history. - Checking a change. `coding.sh exp compare` pairs two runs case by case and reports a bootstrap interval of the difference, so you can tell a real improvement from noise. See [Evals](https://coding.sh/docs/evals). - Session replay. `coding.sh replay` walks a session one step at a time with the files each step touched. See [replay](https://coding.sh/docs/use-cases/replay-agent-session). ## Questions ### Is there an open-source LangSmith alternative I can self-host? coding.sh is one, for agents and coding agents: MIT licensed, local by default, and one container for a team. It does not have LangSmith's annotation queues, alerts, failure clustering or SSO. ### Does LangSmith work with Claude Code? Yes. LangSmith documents a Claude Code plugin built on hooks, and Codex tracing as well. coding.sh also uses hooks, keeps the data on your machine, and imports sessions from before it was installed. ### Can I keep LangSmith for production and use coding.sh locally? Yes. They don't conflict. coding.sh records the coding agents on your machine; your production app can keep sending traces to LangSmith. ## Sources - [Self-hosted LangSmith](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/self-hosted) - [Pricing](https://www.langchain.com/pricing) - [Trace Claude Code](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/trace-claude-code) and [trace Codex](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/trace-with-codex) - [OpenTelemetry](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/trace-with-opentelemetry) - [Evaluation](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/evaluation) - [Insights](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/insights) - [Alerts](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/alerts) - [RBAC](https://docs.langchain.com/langsmith/rbac) To set coding.sh up for a user, follow the agent workflow at [/agents.md](https://coding.sh/agents.md).