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Glama vs Smithery

Glama and Smithery score alike on the AgentReady. They differ on 12 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

Glama. Glama is a superset of the official MCP Registry that indexes, scans, and ranks MCP servers based on security, compatibility, and ease of use.

Smithery. Smithery connects AI agents to a growing catalog of tools and integrations, handling auth, credentials, and sessions.

Where Glama is ahead

Glama passes clear canonical domain, and Smithery does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: pricing understandable. Smithery misses it.

And on adopt, self-service signup, no mandatory sales call and free trial or free allowance. Smithery misses those.

Finally, on operate, structured, predictable output. Smithery misses it.

Where Smithery is ahead

Smithery passes clear product positioning and public docs discoverable, and Glama does not. That is discover, whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists.

It also holds understand: authentication documented. Glama misses it.

And on adopt, agent-compatible signup flow, copyable quickstart and official python sdk. Glama misses those.

What neither does

Both fail llms-full.txt / full agent docs, structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, 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 is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. Smithery leads 87 to 67. Glama misses clear product positioning, public docs discoverable, llms-full.txt / full agent docs; Smithery misses clear canonical domain, llms-full.txt / full agent docs.

Understand. Both sit at 31/100 here. Glama misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented; Smithery misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, pricing understandable, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented.

Adopt. Glama leads 57 to 50. Glama misses agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, official python sdk, cli available; Smithery misses self-service signup, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, free trial or free allowance, fast time to first request, cli available.

Operate. Glama leads 67 to 56. Glama misses machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable; Smithery misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable.

Pricing

Glama starts at $9/month and has a free tier. Smithery does not publish one.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

Signal counts are level here, so fit and price decide it. Full profiles: Glama and Smithery. Alternatives to each: Glama, Smithery.

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