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Better Auth vs Ory

Better Auth scores higher on the AgentReady, 57/100 against 55/100. They differ on 11 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Better Auth. A framework-agnostic, universal authentication and authorization framework for TypeScript.

Ory. Ory provides secure, friction-free identity and access management for customers, partners, machines, and agents - with seamless access, granular permissions, and real-time protection.

Where Better Auth is ahead

Better Auth passes structured api reference, authentication documented, pricing understandable and limits / constraints documented, and Ory does not. That is understand, whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it.

It also holds adopt: self-service signup and free trial or free allowance. Ory misses those.

Where Ory is ahead

Ory passes clear canonical domain, and Better Auth does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds adopt: no mandatory sales call and copyable quickstart. Better Auth misses those.

And on operate, observable execution and agent compatibility verified. Better Auth misses those.

What neither does

Both fail llms-full.txt / full agent docs, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable. If your agent needs any of those, you will be building it yourself either way.

Score, pillar by pillar

The AgentReady splits into four pillars, scored separately, because a product can be easy to find and still impossible to adopt.

Discover. Ory leads 93 to 87. Better Auth misses clear canonical domain, llms-full.txt / full agent docs; Ory misses llms-full.txt / full agent docs.

Understand is whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it. Better Auth leads 54 to 15. Better Auth misses openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented; Ory misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. Better Auth leads 62 to 57. Better Auth misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart; Ory misses self-service signup, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request.

Operate. Ory leads 53 to 24. Better Auth misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, observable execution, agent compatibility verified; Ory misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable.

Pricing

Better Auth starts at $0/month and has a free tier. Ory does not publish one.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Better Auth clears more of the signals an agent needs, so it is the safer default for unattended use. Full profiles: Better Auth and Ory. Alternatives to each: Better Auth, Ory.

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["better-auth", "ory"]}