Compare

Stoplight vs Unkey

Unkey scores higher on the AgentReady, 56/100 against 48/100. They differ on 9 of the 41 signals. Which ones decides whether an agent can adopt them without a person watching.

What each one is

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

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 Stoplight is ahead

Stoplight passes agent-compatible signup flow, and Unkey does not. That is adopt, whether an agent can get a key and make its first successful call without a human in the loop.

It also holds operate: structured, predictable output. Unkey misses it.

Where Unkey is ahead

Unkey passes clear canonical domain, clear product positioning and llms.txt published, and Stoplight 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 and limits / constraints documented. Stoplight misses those.

And on adopt, fast time to first request and copyable quickstart. Stoplight misses those.

What neither does

Both fail llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable, openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, mcp integration 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 is whether an agent can find the product at all without being told it exists. Unkey leads 80 to 53. Stoplight misses clear canonical domain, clear product positioning, llms.txt published, llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable; Unkey misses llms-full.txt / full agent docs, mcp discoverable.

Understand. Unkey leads 54 to 38. Stoplight misses openapi / spec quality, authentication documented, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented, limits / constraints documented; Unkey misses openapi / spec quality, request examples provided, response examples provided, errors and status codes documented.

Adopt. Both sit at 55/100 here. Stoplight misses no mandatory sales call, programmatic credential creation, fast time to first request, copyable quickstart, mcp integration available; Unkey misses no mandatory sales call, agent-compatible signup flow, programmatic credential creation, mcp integration available.

Operate. Stoplight leads 47 to 35. Stoplight misses 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

Stoplight starts at $44/mo and has a free tier. Unkey starts at $5/mo and has a free tier.

Signal by signal

Which to pick

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

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