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Cerbos vs Stoplight

Stoplight scores higher on the AgentReady, 48/100 against 46/100. They differ on 13 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.

Stoplight. Stoplight is a collaborative platform equipping teams with tooling across the API lifecycle to help them build quality APIs efficiently.

Where Cerbos is ahead

Cerbos passes clear product positioning, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs and mcp discoverable, and Stoplight 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 and mcp integration available. Stoplight misses those.

Where Stoplight is ahead

Stoplight passes structured api reference and pricing understandable, 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 and cli available. Cerbos misses those.

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

What neither does

Both fail clear canonical domain, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, 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 is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. Cerbos leads 93 to 53. Cerbos misses clear canonical domain; Stoplight misses clear canonical domain, clear product positioning, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable.

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

Adopt. Stoplight 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; Stoplight misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, mcp integration available.

Operate. Stoplight leads 47 to 35. Cerbos misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Stoplight 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. Stoplight starts at $44/mo and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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