LangSmith for Startups 🎁 Program

What you get

LangChain runs two tiers for its LangSmith platform (tracing, evaluation and deployment for LLM apps and agents):

• Build: discounted seat pricing for early-stage, VC-backed startups and founders. The page does not state the discount percentage.
• Scale: $10K in LangSmith credits, available for one year, plus VIP event invitations, office hours and cohort sessions, a VIP founders Slack channel and a featured startup spotlight.

Who qualifies

• Build: first-time customer, less than $10M in funding, at least $25K raised in seed funding (additional criteria may apply).
• Scale: first-time customer, Series A (up to $50M in funding) or earlier, and backed by a LangChain premier VC partner.

Good to know

• Credits are available within a few days of applying. Y Combinator participants have two years to use them.
• You need a LangSmith account created with your startup domain email.
• If you do not qualify, LangChain says it will tell you.

How to get the most from it

LangSmith is most useful once you have real users or a test set: set up tracing early, then build a small evaluation dataset from real conversations so you can compare prompts and models before each release. Ask your investors whether they are a LangChain premier partner before applying, since that decides whether you get credits or only a seat discount.

Verdict

Handy once you are building agents or LLM features and need observability and evals. The $10K credit needs a premier VC partner; otherwise you get a seat discount.

1. Check which tier fits: Build (under $10M raised, $25K+ seed) or Scale (premier VC partner, Series A or earlier).
2. Create a LangSmith account with your startup domain email.
3. Submit the Build or Scale application from https://www.langchain.com/startups.
4. Look for the confirmation email with your benefits and activation steps.