CrewAI focuses on role-based multi-agent workflows. Instead of a single all-purpose agent, you define a 'crew' of agents with specific roles (researcher, writer, reviewer, etc.) that collaborate on tasks. The abstraction is intentionally simpler than LangGraph for teams who want multi-agent patterns without implementing a state machine by hand.
You define each agent with a role, goal, backstory, and set of tools. Tasks are assigned to specific agents, with dependencies between them. CrewAI handles the orchestration — passing outputs between agents, retrying failures, and aggregating results. Hierarchical process mode adds a manager agent that delegates to worker agents. Integrates with LangChain tools, so you can reuse the LangChain ecosystem while keeping CrewAI's simpler API.
Open source: free. CrewAI Enterprise: managed orchestration, audit logs, and deployment tools. Pricing on request.
Teams building research assistants, content workflows, code generation pipelines, and any task that benefits from role specialization. Popular in the agentic AI community.