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Cerbos vs Propelauth

Propelauth scores higher on the AgentReady, 59/100 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.

Propelauth. PropelAuth provides end-to-end managed user authentication specializing in B2B use cases, built for AI-native companies with multi-tenant auth requirements

Where Cerbos is ahead

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

Where Propelauth is ahead

Propelauth passes authentication documented, pricing understandable and limits / constraints documented, and Cerbos 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, agent-compatible signup flow, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request and cli available. Cerbos misses those.

What neither does

Both fail clear canonical domain, structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, no mandatory sales call, 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. Cerbos leads 93 to 80. Cerbos misses clear canonical domain; Propelauth misses clear canonical domain, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs.

Understand. Propelauth leads 38 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; Propelauth misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, 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. Propelauth leads 80 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; Propelauth misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation.

Operate. Propelauth leads 39 to 35. Cerbos misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Propelauth misses structured, predictable output, 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. Propelauth starts at $0/month and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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