Head to head · Auth oauth · October 2026 research run
Arcade.dev vs WorkOS Pipes and Agents
Arcade.dev has a score of 67 (B) against WorkOS Pipes and Agents's 60 (C). Both do auth oauth. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 30 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Arcade.dev for
- schema & documentation (+29)
- agent ergonomics (+10)
- payments & pricing (+30)
- transparency & trust (+8)
Pick WorkOS Pipes and Agents for
- reliability (+7)
- maintenance & community (+9)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Arcade.dev | WorkOS Pipes and Agents | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 63 | 70 | WorkOS Pipes and Agents +7 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 82 | 53 | Arcade.dev +29 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 79 | 69 | Arcade.dev +10 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 71 | 69 | Arcade.dev +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 40 | 10 | Arcade.dev +30 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 74 | 83 | WorkOS Pipes and Agents +9 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 72 | 64 | Arcade.dev +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | 0 | |
| Total | 67 · B | 60 · C |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Arcade.dev | WorkOS Pipes and Agents |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Arcade.dev | WorkOS |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.arcade.dev | https://api.workos.com |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (arcade-mcp framework and SDKs), platform closed | MIT (SDKs), platform closed |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | com.workos/mcp |
| Last release | 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-28 |
| Popularity | 1k stars, 125k npm/wk, 70k PyPI/wk | 221 stars, 4M npm/wk, 1.7M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |
Verdicts
Arcade.dev
Consent flow, token storage and refresh, and tool execution in one service, so the model never holds a provider token. The terms of 15 July 2025 call the service an early version provided as is, with no uptime commitment below Enterprise.
WorkOS Pipes and Agents
Agent identity with per-session revocation and token lifetimes set per blueprint. 21 incidents on the status page since 3 July 2026, several over an hour.
Before you call either
Arcade.dev
- Call
POST /v1/tools/authorizefirst and send the user the returned URL when the status isn't completed - Pass a stable user ID from your own database as user_id, never a shared value
- Read retry_after_ms on an UpstreamRateLimitError and wait that long before calling again
- Register your own OAuth app and a custom user verifier before real users sign in, because the default apps only accept members of your Arcade project
- Revoke a user's access with
DELETE /v1/admin/user_connections/{id}
WorkOS Pipes and Agents
- Call POST /data-integrations/{provider}/token with user_id for each use and don't cache the token
- Branch on
activein the response and send the user to reconnect onneeds_reauthorization - Wait for Retry-After on a 429, or back off with jitter when it's missing
- Use lower-case provider slugs such as github or slack
- Revoke an agent's session through the Agents API when a task ends instead of waiting for expiry
Other comparisons with Arcade.dev or WorkOS Pipes and Agents
- Arcade.dev vs Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault)
- Arcade.dev vs Descope Agentic Identity Hub
- Arcade.dev vs Keycard
- Arcade.dev vs Nango
- Arcade.dev vs Scalekit AgentKit
- Arcade.dev vs Stytch Connected Apps
- Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) vs WorkOS Pipes and Agents
- Descope Agentic Identity Hub vs WorkOS Pipes and Agents
- Keycard vs WorkOS Pipes and Agents
- Nango vs WorkOS Pipes and Agents
- Scalekit AgentKit vs WorkOS Pipes and Agents
- Stytch Connected Apps vs WorkOS Pipes and Agents
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/arcade.json·/api/v1/tools/workos-pipes.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/arcade-vs-workos-pipes.md