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SOAT vs Microsoft Agent Framework

Microsoft Agent Framework is an agent framework (MIT, self-hosted or managed). SOAT is agent infrastructure (Apache-2.0, self-hosted). Of the 15 capabilities the benchmark tracks, Microsoft Agent Framework covers 6 natively and SOAT 12.

At a glance​

Microsoft Agent FrameworkSOAT
Typean agent frameworkagent infrastructure
LicenseMITApache-2.0
Deploymentself-hosted or managedself-hosted
Native capabilities6 of 1512 of 15
Last verified2026-08-142026-08-14

Where each one leads​

  • Microsoft Agent Framework has no native capability that SOAT lacks.
  • SOAT is native where Microsoft Agent Framework is not: knowledge & memory, identity & governance, data & secrets, multi-tenancy, declarative deployment, versioning & rollout.

What Microsoft Agent Framework is​

Multi-language (.NET, Python, Go) library for building agents and graph-based multi-agent workflows, positioned as the successor to AutoGen and Semantic Kernel. Provides agents, sessions, context providers, middleware, MCP clients, OpenTelemetry instrumentation, and an evaluation framework, with optional Microsoft Foundry hosting. Microsoft Agent Framework documentation.

Capability by capability​

Agent runtime​

Agent loop, sessions, and generation lifecycle.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Native. Agent abstraction with streaming and non-streaming runs, AgentSession state management, history providers, and middleware for intercepting agent actions. (source)
  • SOAT: Native. Agents, sessions, chats, and generations with full lifecycle tracking. (source)

Orchestration​

Multi-step pipelines, workflows, and triggers.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Native. Graph-based and functional workflows with sequential, concurrent, handoff, and group-chat patterns plus checkpointed long-running runs. (source)
  • SOAT: Native. DAG orchestrations, workflow state machines, durable tasks, and triggers (manual, webhook, schedule). (source)

Knowledge & memory​

Documents, embeddings, semantic search, and recall.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Partial. Sessions and context/history providers give conversational and long-term memory, but document ingestion and vector search come from external providers such as Mem0. (source)
  • SOAT: Native. Documents with per-chunk embeddings, named memories, unified semantic search, and ingestion rules for PDFs, images, and audio. (source)

Tools & integration​

Tool calling, MCP, providers, and webhooks.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Native. Function tools plus first-class MCP clients (stdio, streamable HTTP, websocket) and hosted MCP tools across Foundry, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and Ollama. (source)
  • SOAT: Native. HTTP, MCP, client, and agent-to-agent tools; model routes with failover; webhooks; any LLM provider. (source)

Identity & governance​

IAM, guardrails, approvals, quotas, and audit.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Partial. Per-tool human approval with standing and auto-approval rules is built in, but there is no IAM, quota, or audit-log subsystem. (source)
  • SOAT: Native. AWS-inspired IAM, actors, scoped API keys, guardrails, human approvals, quotas, and an append-only audit log. (source)

Observability​

Traces, activity, usage, and failure queues.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Native. Emits OpenTelemetry traces, logs, and metrics per the GenAI semantic conventions, including token usage and per-tool invocation duration. (source)
  • SOAT: Native. Traces of every tool call and model response, activity feed, usage/cost tracking, and an exceptions queue. (source)

Data & secrets​

File storage and encrypted secrets.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Absent. No managed file storage or encrypted secrets service; credentials come from Azure identity or environment variables.
  • SOAT: Native. File storage over local/S3/GCS backends and encrypted secrets storage. (source)

Evaluation​

Datasets, scorers, and eval-gated improvement.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Native. Built-in evaluation framework with evaluators and results, local checks (keyword, tool-called, custom functions), and Foundry model-as-judge evaluators. (source)
  • SOAT: Native. Datasets, scorers, and scored runs; eval-gated promotion of agent versions. (source)

Channels​

Built-in gateways to messaging platforms and UIs.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Partial. DevUI provides a web chat interface with an OpenAI-compatible API, but it is an explicitly non-production sample app and there are no messaging-platform gateways. (source)
  • SOAT: Absent. Surfaces are REST, MCP, CLI, and SDK — no built-in gateways to messaging platforms like Slack, WhatsApp, or Telegram.

Code execution​

Sandboxed code or terminal runtimes for agents.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Partial. Code Interpreter is a provider-side hosted tool whose availability depends on the model provider; no local sandbox runtime ships with the framework. (source)
  • SOAT: Absent. Tool types are HTTP, MCP, client, and agent-to-agent — no built-in sandboxed code or terminal runtime.

Human-in-the-loop​

Pausing a run for human approval, then resuming it.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Native. Tools marked to always require approval make a run return approval requests that resume when the response is passed back, and workflows expose the same pause with pending requests persisted in checkpoints. (source)
  • SOAT: Native. Approvals are a first-class human-decision queue with frozen evidence, and guardrails classify each tool call so risky actions pause for a decision. (source)

Multi-tenancy​

Projects or workspaces scoping resources and permissions.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Absent. An in-process library scoping state to a session; tenant isolation of resources and permissions is left to the hosting application or a separate Azure service.
  • SOAT: Native. Projects are multi-tenant namespaces scoping every resource, with IAM policies and quotas enforced per project. (source)

Declarative deployment​

Templates that provision agent resources as one stack.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Partial. A declarative package loads agents and workflows from YAML or JSON, but these are runtime object factories with no plan/apply, state tracking, or resource provisioning. (source)
  • SOAT: Native. Formations provision providers, memories, tools, agents, orchestrations, and webhooks from one template, resolving refs into a dependency graph with tracked operations. (source)

Versioning & rollout​

Agent versions, canary rollout, gated promotion.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Absent. Declarative agent definitions can be checked into source control, but the framework has no immutable agent versions, aliases, canary rollout, or rollback.
  • SOAT: Native. Every config change is archived as an append-only agent version, with canary rollout to a slice of traffic and eval-gated promotion. (source)

Skill learning​

Agents authoring reusable skills from their own experience.

  • Microsoft Agent Framework: Absent. Skills are developer-authored packages of instructions, resources, and scripts; agents consume them and never generate or revise them.
  • SOAT: Absent. Memories and knowledge store retrievable context, but agents do not author or refine reusable skills from their own experience.

How this is rated​

Each rating comes from the public documentation linked beside it: Native is built in, Via plugin needs an add-on, Partial covers part of the capability, Absent is not offered. Every solution side by side is on the benchmark. A rating that is out of date is a bug: open an issue.