# Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) vs Keycard

> Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) has a score of 71.5 (BB) against Keycard's 56.3 (C). Both do auth oauth. The largest gap is reliability, 40 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-04

Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) has a score of 71.5 (BB) against Keycard's 56.3 (C). Both do auth oauth. The largest gap is reliability, 40 points.

- Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault): grade BB, 71.5/100, rank #82 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/auth0-ai-agents.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/auth0-ai-agents.json
- Keycard: grade C, 56.3/100, rank #303 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/keycard.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/keycard.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) for reliability (+40), schema & documentation (+12), agent ergonomics (+11), transparency & trust (+40).

Pick Keycard for maintenance & community (+5).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) | Keycard | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 75 | 35 | Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 73 | 61 | Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) +12 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 60 | Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 88 | 86 | Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) +2 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 30 | even |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 79 | Keycard +5 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 45 | Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) +40 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **71.5 · BB** | **56.3 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault) | Keycard |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Auth0 by Okta | Keycard Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://{tenant}.auth0.com/oauth/token` | `https://api.keycard.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (SDKs), platform closed | MIT (SDKs), Apache-2.0 (keycard-python API client), platform closed, BYOC or on-prem on Enterprise |
| 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 | yes |
| MCP registry | `com.auth0/mcp` | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-22 |
| Popularity | 16 stars, 3.1k npm/wk | 1 stars, 52 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.5/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault).** Standard grants throughout, RFC 8693 token exchange, CIBA with RAR and DPoP. Only works when Auth0 is the identity provider for your users.

**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

### Auth0 for AI Agents (Token Vault)

1. Turn off refresh token rotation on the application before using the refresh token exchange
2. Treat a 401 from the exchange as a missing connected account and send the user through the Connected Accounts flow
3. Pass login_hint when a user has linked two accounts from the same provider
4. Use CIBA for purchases or deletes and wait for the approval instead of asking in chat
5. Read X-RateLimit-Reset on a 429 and back off until then

### 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

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