Microsoft Agent Framework
the ga successor that merged autogen and semantic kernel
the official convergence of autogen and semantic kernel — 1.0 ga, the only serious first-class .net agent framework — but young as a merged product and heavy on azure gravity.
microsoft agent framework unifies autogen's multi-agent orchestration with semantic kernel's enterprise foundation (state, filters, telemetry, type safety), across python and .net. it shipped 1.0 ga in april 2026 with stable apis and a long-term-support commitment, plus a2a and mcp interop and azure ai foundry deploy. crucially it's the go-forward successor to both predecessors: autogen is now explicitly in maintenance mode and points new users here, and semantic kernel is supported but de-prioritised for new features.
it's the only credible first-class .net agent framework, which alone justifies its place for microsoft shops. the caveats are that it's young as a merged product and carries heavy azure gravity. (note the licence trap on the old autogen repo: github shows cc-by-4.0 but the code is mit under LICENSE-CODE.)
the description above is ours, condensed from the ranking. pricing moves — check it on the vendor's own page before you rely on it.
- category
- ai agent frameworks
- pricing
- free — MIT (open source)
- website
- github.com
the official convergence of autogen and semantic kernel — 1.0 ga, the only serious first-class .net agent framework — but young as a merged product and heavy on azure gravity.
we researched this category against vendors' own pricing pages and licence files. that is where this line comes from — not from the vendor, and not from anything they paid for.