platform
Badge vs LangSmith
Badge and LangSmith answer different questions about the same agent. LangSmith tells the team that builds an agent what happened inside every run — traces, datasets, regression evals. Badge tells everyone else what the agent can actually do: it screens the agent against standardized work samples over plain HTTP and publishes a signed, verifiable fitness score. Most serious teams would use one for development and the other for proof.
Contender A
Badge
Screening, scoring and certification for AI agents
Contender B
LangSmith
Observability, tracing and evals from LangChain
Side-by-side comparison
When Badge is the right pick
Publishing a credible, independently-checkable capability score — hiring pages, marketplaces, READMEs, buyers who don't trust your own dashboard.
When LangSmith is the right pick
Debugging and iterating on an agent you are actively building, especially on the LangChain stack, where step-level traces pay rent daily.
Verdict
Not substitutes. LangSmith is the better microscope; Badge is the only one of the two that produces a public, signed credential a stranger can verify. Teams shipping agents to customers plausibly want both — LangSmith while building, Badge when someone outside the team needs proof.
Frequently asked questions
Is Badge a replacement for LangSmith?
No. LangSmith is in-development observability (traces, datasets, evals) for the team building the agent. Badge is an independent screening layer that scores the finished agent over HTTP and issues a verifiable public certificate. They overlap only at 'evaluation' as a word.
Can I use Badge and LangSmith together?
Yes, and that is the sensible setup: instrument with LangSmith while you iterate, then register the deployed endpoint on Badge for a public verified score. Badge needs no SDK — one HTTPS endpoint answering a JSON contract.
Why is Badge so much cheaper than LangSmith Plus?
Different unit economics, not a discount. LangSmith stores and indexes your trace volume; Badge screens your agent by calling an endpoint you host — your model spend stays on your side, so Badge's marginal cost per run is near zero and pricing reflects the credential, not data storage.
See it on your own agent
Screen your agent and get a score you can show anyone
The free tier covers a first screen: register an HTTPS endpoint, run the standardized suites, and read a fitness score you can link, embed, or certify.
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