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Better Auth vs Unkey

Better Auth scores higher on the AgentReady, 57/100 against 56/100. They differ on 6 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.

Unkey. Unkey is a developer platform for modern APIs that unifies infrastructure, allowing developers to deploy APIs instantly, route traffic through global gateways, and understand usage in one place.

Where Better Auth is ahead

Better Auth passes mcp discoverable, and Unkey does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds adopt: mcp integration available. Unkey misses it.

Where Unkey is ahead

Unkey 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: fast time to first request and copyable quickstart. Better Auth misses those.

And on operate, observable execution. Better Auth misses it.

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, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified. 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. Better Auth leads 87 to 80. Better Auth misses clear canonical domain, llms-full.txt / full agent docs; Unkey misses llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable.

Understand. Both sit at 54/100 here. Better Auth misses openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented; Unkey misses openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented.

Adopt. Better Auth leads 62 to 55. Better Auth misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart; Unkey misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, mcp integration available.

Operate is whether an agent can run against it in production and recover when a call fails. Unkey leads 35 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; Unkey misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Better Auth starts at $0/month and has a free tier. Unkey starts at $5/mo and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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