Arcade alternatives
The highest-scoring alternative to Arcade is Composio at 97/100 on the AgentReady, against 61/100 for Arcade.
All scored in Agent Auth & Permissions.
| Score | Alternative | Compare |
|---|---|---|
| 97 | Composio | Arcade vs Composio |
| 79 | Permit.io | Arcade vs Permit.io |
| 63 | Auth0 | Arcade vs Auth0 |
| 55 | Ory | Arcade vs Ory |
| 51 | Stytch | Arcade vs Stytch |
| 46 | Cerbos | Arcade vs Cerbos |
What Composio does that Arcade does not
Composio passes clear product positioning, structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, rate-limit behavior predictable, and Arcade fails them. That is the whole of the gap between the two scores, so if none of those matter to your agent the ranking above overstates the difference.
Why people look for an alternative
Arcade fails clear product positioning, structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable. Each one is a place an unattended run stops, which is usually what sends someone looking in the first place.
Where Arcade loses the points
| Pillar | Arcade | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Discover | 87 | Can an agent find it at all: sitemap, robots, structured data. |
| Understand | 23 | Is there a spec, an llms.txt, a machine-readable description. |
| Adopt | 76 | Signup, keys, SDKs, and whether a human has to be involved. |
| Operate | 56 | Rate-limit headers, errors, status, and behaviour under load. |
Arcade is weakest on understand at 23/100. Without a spec an agent has to guess at endpoints, and it guesses wrong. If that is the part your agent depends on, take the ranking above seriously; if it is not, Arcade may still be the right pick.
What an agent runs into with Arcade
These are the findings from the last audit on 2026-08-22. Each one is a place unattended software stops, which is the practical reason to look at the list above.
- Publish an OpenAPI spec so agents can generate a client.
- Flesh out the OpenAPI: paths, schemas, and descriptions.
- Document error responses as an enum in your OpenAPI.
- Let agents create API keys programmatically.
- Return X-RateLimit / Retry-After headers so agents pace themselves.
- Add request examples to your API reference.
- Add response examples to your API reference.
- Support an Idempotency-Key so retries are safe.
What this category actually supports
Across the 7 products scored in Agent Auth & Permissions, delegate scoped access is offered by 14%. Anything under half is a gap you should expect to fill yourself whichever one you pick.
An agent can get this list directly: resolve("alternative to Arcade") over the MCP server, or GET /v1/categories/agent-auth.