Google ADK vs Mastra
Side-by-side comparison of two agent options that often come up together when people are choosing between self-hosted frameworks, managed assistants, and extensible AI tooling.
Open source19k stars
Google ADK
Google's open-source code-first Python toolkit for building and evaluating AI agents
Open source23k stars
Mastra
TypeScript-first agent framework with observational memory and workflow orchestration
Category
Google ADK
Mastra
Tagline
Google's open-source code-first Python toolkit for building and evaluating AI agents
TypeScript-first agent framework with observational memory and workflow orchestration
Deployment
Self-Hosted
Self-Hosted
Pricing
Free to use, with optional model or infrastructure costs if you self-host.
Free to use, with optional model or infrastructure costs if you self-host.
Channels
Web, CLI
Web, CLI
Open source
Yes
Yes
Privacy
Some privacy controls exist, but vendor-hosted infrastructure still handles a meaningful share of the data flow.
Good privacy posture for most teams, especially when self-hosted or carefully configured.
Google ADK pros
- Official Google backing
- Built-in evaluation framework
- Multi-agent orchestration
Mastra pros
- TypeScript-first — rare in the agent framework space (most are Python)
- Observational Memory — automatically tracks and surfaces agent reasoning patterns
- From the Gatsby team — proven track record building developer-facing OSS
Google ADK cons
- Python-only
- Development framework, not ready-to-use assistant
- Google Gemini API dependency
Mastra cons
- TypeScript-only — not suitable for Python-heavy stacks
- Younger ecosystem compared to LangChain or CrewAI
- Primarily a development framework — not a ready-to-use personal assistant
Google ADK gotchas
- You should expect ongoing hosting, uptime, and secret-management work if you deploy it for real users.
Mastra gotchas
- You should expect ongoing hosting, uptime, and secret-management work if you deploy it for real users.
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