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Head to head · Auth oauth · October 2026 research run

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity vs Keycard

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity scores 74.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Keycard's 56.2 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Keycard leads on maintenance & community. Both do auth oauth.

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore IdentityAmazon Web Services · HTTP API BB74.8/100#64 of 841 KeycardKeycard Labs · HTTP API C56.2/100#572 of 841

Which one, for what

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity BB

Good for Agents already built on AWS, above all those on AgentCore Runtime or Gateway, where token retrieval is automatic and free of extra charge.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 85 against 35
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 61
  • Agent ergonomics, 76 against 60
  • Transparency & trust, 75 against 44

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

No operation to revoke or delete one user's stored grant was found. forceAuthentication clears a refresh token, and AWS says it cannot detect a revocation made at the provider.

Keycard C

Good for A security-minded team building agents that need their own identities, policy on every delegation and an audit trail per hop, and that is comfortable on an Early Access product.

Ahead on

  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 70

Watch for

Early Access with sign-up by request, and no terms of service page

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAmazon Bedrock AgentCore IdentityKeycardEdge
Reliability16%208535Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity +50
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28861Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity +27
Agent ergonomics13%16.27660Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity +16
Security & auth14%17.58486Keycard +2
Payments & pricing10%12.53030even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87079Keycard +9
Transparency & trust7%8.87544Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity +31
Negative events≤1500
Total74.8 · BB56.2 · C

Facts side by side

FactAmazon Bedrock AgentCore IdentityKeycard
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorAmazon Web ServicesKeycard Labs
Hosted endpointhttps://bedrock-agentcore.us-east-1.amazonaws.comhttps://api.keycard.ai
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per useFreemium
Price for auth oauth$0.01 per 1,000 requestsnot published
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under the AWS Customer Agreement and AWS Service Terms. The AgentCore SDKs for Python and TypeScript are Apache-2.0MIT (SDKs), Apache-2.0 (keycard-python API client), platform closed, BYOC or on-prem on Enterprise
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-012026-09-22
Terms last updated2026-10-01no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-05-18couldn't be read
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity335k npm/wk, 1.4M PyPI/wk1 stars, 52 npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity

The service handles user-delegated, machine-to-machine and on-behalf-of token flows through one call, with IAM scoping, KMS encryption and published quotas. It only works inside an AWS account a person creates, the hosted consent portal needs an AgentCore Gateway, and no call to revoke one user's stored grant was found in the API reference.

Keycard

Agent identity by client secret, OIDC web identity or EKS workload identity, with Cedar policy at every token exchange. Early Access with sign-up by request, and no terms of service page.

Before you call either

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity

  1. Get a workload access token first (GetWorkloadAccessTokenForJWT in production), then pass it as workloadIdentityToken to GetResourceOauth2Token or GetResourceApiKey.
  2. When GetResourceOauth2Token returns authorizationUrl instead of accessToken, send the URL to the user and call again with the same sessionUri after consent.
  3. For user-delegated flows, host an HTTPS callback, register it with UpdateWorkloadIdentity as an allowed return URL, and call CompleteResourceTokenAuth after checking the user's session.
  4. Ask for refresh tokens in the provider's own way, such as access_type=offline in customParameters for Google or the offline_access scope for Microsoft and Atlassian.
  5. Treat a returned token as possibly revoked. On a 401 from the resource server, retry with forceAuthentication set to true.

Keycard

  1. Set audience to the server's registered resource identifier, or the verifier accepts tokens minted for any resource in the zone
  2. Check AccessContext.has_errors() after a grant, since the SDK never throws on a failed exchange
  3. Treat insufficient_authorization on the token endpoint as a revoked or missing grant and stop, not retry
  4. Keep credentials short-lived, because revocation only stops the next issuance
  5. Pin keycardai-mcp to a major version, since 1.0.0 and 2.0.0 shipped a day apart

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity or Keycard?

Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity scores 74.8 (BB) on agent readiness against Keycard's 56.2 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Keycard leads on maintenance & community.

Do Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity and Keycard need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity and Keycard without installing anything?

Yes. Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity has a hosted endpoint at https://bedrock-agentcore.us-east-1.amazonaws.com and Keycard at https://api.keycard.ai.

Other comparisons with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Identity or Keycard

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