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Fauna vs Powersync

Powersync scores higher on the AgentReady, 50/100 against 20/100. 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

Fauna. Fauna is a distributed serverless database that combines document flexibility with relational power, automatic scaling, and zero operational overhead.

Powersync. PowerSync is a sync engine that consists of two components: a service that enables high-scalability partial data syncing and a set of client SDKs that manage client-side persistence, consistency, reactivity and syncing write operations back.

Where Fauna is ahead

Fauna passes official python sdk, and Powersync does not. That is adopt, whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop.

Where Powersync is ahead

Powersync passes clear canonical domain, clear product positioning, public docs discoverable, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs and machine-readable metadata, and Fauna does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds adopt: self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow and cli available. Fauna misses those.

And on operate, canonical workflow succeeds and observable execution. Fauna misses those.

What neither does

Both fail mcp discoverable, structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, mcp integration available, 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 is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. Powersync leads 87 to 33. Fauna misses clear canonical domain, clear product positioning, public docs discoverable, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable, machine-readable metadata; Powersync misses mcp discoverable.

Understand. Both sit at 23/100 here. Fauna misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; Powersync misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented.

Adopt. Powersync leads 55 to 25. Fauna misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, cli available, mcp integration available; Powersync misses programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, official python sdk, mcp integration available.

Operate. Powersync leads 35 to 0. Fauna misses canonical workflow succeeds, structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, observable execution, agent compatibility verified; Powersync misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Fauna starts at $150/mo with no free tier. Powersync starts at $0/month and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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