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Propelauth vs Unkey

Propelauth scores higher on the AgentReady, 59/100 against 56/100. 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

Propelauth. PropelAuth provides end-to-end managed user authentication specializing in B2B use cases, built for AI-native companies with multi-tenant auth requirements

Unkey. Unkey is a developer platform for modern APIs that unifies infrastructure, allowing developers to deploy APIs instantly, route traffic through global gateways, and understand usage in one place.

Where Propelauth is ahead

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

It also holds adopt: agent-compatible signup flow and mcp integration available. Unkey misses those.

Where Unkey is ahead

Unkey passes clear canonical domain and llms.txt published, and Propelauth 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. Propelauth misses it.

What neither does

Both fail llms-full.txt / full agent docs, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, 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. Both sit at 80/100 here. Propelauth misses clear canonical domain, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs; Unkey misses llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable.

Understand. Unkey leads 54 to 38. Propelauth misses structured api reference, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented; Unkey misses openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented.

Adopt is whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop. Propelauth leads 80 to 55. Propelauth misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation; Unkey misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, mcp integration available.

Operate. Propelauth leads 39 to 35. Propelauth misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified; Unkey misses structured, predictable output, machine-readable errors, retry behavior documented, idempotency support, rate-limit behavior predictable, agent compatibility verified.

Pricing

Propelauth starts at $0/month and has a free tier. Unkey starts at $5/mo and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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