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Cerbos vs Stytch

Stytch scores higher on the AgentReady, 51/100 against 46/100. 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

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

Stytch. The identity platform for humans & AI agents.

Where Cerbos is ahead

Cerbos passes mcp discoverable, and Stytch 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. Stytch misses it.

Where Stytch is ahead

Stytch 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 and authentication documented. Cerbos misses those.

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

What neither does

Both fail openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, 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, 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 87. Cerbos misses clear canonical domain; Stytch misses mcp discoverable.

Understand is whether an agent can read the docs and work out how the API behaves before calling it. Stytch 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; Stytch misses openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. Cerbos leads 40 to 29. 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; Stytch 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, mcp integration available.

Operate. Stytch leads 50 to 35. Cerbos misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Stytch 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. Stytch does not publish one.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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