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Cerbos vs Speakeasy

Speakeasy scores higher on the AgentReady, 64/100 against 46/100. They differ on 9 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.

Speakeasy. Speakeasy is an AI control plane platform for securely scaling enterprise AI.

Where Cerbos is ahead

Cerbos passes search discoverable, and Speakeasy does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

Where Speakeasy is ahead

Speakeasy 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: structured api reference, authentication documented and pricing understandable. Cerbos misses those.

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

Finally, on operate, structured, predictable output and agent compatibility verified. Cerbos misses those.

What neither does

Both fail openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, self-service signup, 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. 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 87. Cerbos misses clear canonical domain; Speakeasy misses search discoverable.

Understand. Speakeasy leads 46 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; Speakeasy misses openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. Speakeasy leads 55 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; Speakeasy misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, cli available.

Operate is whether an agent can run against it in production and recover when a call fails. Speakeasy leads 67 to 35. Cerbos misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Speakeasy misses machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable.

Pricing

Cerbos does not publish a machine-readable starting price. Speakeasy does not publish one with no free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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