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Semantic Kernel review

Integrate cutting-edge LLM technology quickly and easily into your apps

Updated Nov 1, 2026. Review written Nov 1, 2026 from the project's own sources; usage data refreshed every Monday.

Semantic Kernel at a glance

Category
Agent frameworks
Website
aka.ms/semantic-kernel

Is Semantic Kernel growing? Usage data

In the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, Semantic Kernel ranked #316 on the Devtoolwatch Board and #32 in Agent frameworks, with a momentum score of 29 out of 100. Its main package had 83.4k downloads that week, +12% against its own 4-week average.

New GitHub stars per week for Semantic Kernel12 weeks from Aug 9, 2026: 36, 34, 52, 30, 26, 34, 33, 33, 28, 39, 37, 37 new stars, an average of 35 a week.Aug 9week of Oct 25
New GitHub stars per week for the last 12 weeks, from GitHub's stargazer history (today's stargazers by the week they starred).
Show the weekly numbers
New GitHub stars per week for Semantic Kernel
Week ofNew stars
Aug 9, 202636
Aug 16, 202634
Aug 23, 202652
Aug 30, 202630
Sep 6, 202626
Sep 13, 202634
Sep 20, 202633
Sep 27, 202633
Oct 4, 202628
Oct 11, 202639
Oct 18, 202637
Oct 25, 202637

The Board ranks tools by four signals each week: new stars, new stars for the repo's size, added downloads and download growth beyond the market. How the ranking works.

Semantic Kernel alternatives

Other AI agent frameworks on the Board in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, by momentum:

Agent frameworks ranked by momentum, the week of Oct 25–31, 2026
RankToolStarsDownloads/wk
#1Harness²Harness² is a Python framework from Google Research for recursive agent harnessing, refining an agent's prompts, tools, memory and…21.7k–
#2HyperFramesHyperFrames is an open-source framework that turns HTML, CSS, media, and seekable animations into deterministic MP4 videos, built for AI…76.6k1.5M
#3AgentScopeAgentScope is a Python agent framework with an SDK for building ReAct agents and an agent service backend with a web UI.35k51.4k
#4AG-UIAG-UI is an open, event-based protocol that standardizes how AI agents connect to user-facing frontend applications.16.9k4.6M
#5LangGraphLangGraph is a low-level orchestration framework and runtime for building, managing, and deploying long-running, stateful agents in…44.2k18.5M
#6BifrostOpen-source, high-performance AI gateway that works as your LLM gateway, MCP gateway and agent gateway. One OpenAI-compatible API for…9.3k–

All AI agent frameworks, ranked

Semantic Kernel FAQ

How popular is Semantic Kernel?

Semantic Kernel has 28.7k GitHub stars as of Nov 1, 2026. It gained 37 new stars in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, against a 12-week average of 35 a week. Its main package had 83.4k downloads that week, +12% against its own 4-week average. That made it #32 among AI agent frameworks on the Devtoolwatch Board.

What are the best alternatives to Semantic Kernel?

Other AI agent frameworks on the Devtoolwatch Board in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, by momentum: Harness² (#1), HyperFrames (#2), AgentScope (#3), AG-UI (#4), LangGraph (#5). The alternatives table above has their numbers.

Sources

  1. Devtoolwatch Board, the week of Oct 25–31, 2026

Semantic Kernel README badge

Maintainers can show the tool's weekly Board rank in their README:

Devtoolwatch badge for Semantic Kernel

[![Devtoolwatch](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/badge/semantic-kernel.svg)](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/semantic-kernel/)

How this page is made: Devtoolwatch writes each review from the project's README, releases, package metadata and website, with an AI model, then checks every claim against the source it cites and drops what the sources don't support. The numbers come from Devtoolwatch's daily GitHub snapshots, GitHub's stargazer history, and the npm and PyPI download APIs. Spotted an error? Email [email protected].