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Cerbos vs Frontegg

Frontegg scores higher on the AgentReady, 57/100 against 46/100. They differ on 10 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Cerbos. Authorization management platform for applications, APIs, AI agents, MCP servers, services, and workloads.

Frontegg. Frontegg secures every entry point into your SaaS app.

Where Cerbos is ahead

Cerbos passes public docs discoverable and llms-full.txt / full agent docs, and Frontegg does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds adopt: copyable quickstart. Frontegg misses it.

Where Frontegg is ahead

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

It also holds understand: pricing understandable and limits / constraints documented. Cerbos misses those.

And on adopt, self-service signup, agent-compatible signup flow and free trial or free allowance. Cerbos misses those.

Finally, on operate, structured, predictable output. Cerbos misses it.

What neither does

Both fail structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, cli available, 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. Cerbos leads 93 to 80. Cerbos misses clear canonical domain; Frontegg misses public docs discoverable, llms-full.txt / full agent docs.

Understand. Frontegg leads 31 to 15. Cerbos 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; Frontegg misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented.

Adopt is whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop. Frontegg leads 65 to 40. Cerbos misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, cli available; Frontegg misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, cli available.

Operate. Frontegg leads 50 to 35. Cerbos misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Frontegg misses machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Cerbos does not publish a machine-readable starting price. Frontegg does not publish one and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

An agent can fetch this as data: POST /v1/compare {"slugs": ["cerbos", "frontegg"]}