# Autodesk Platform Services vs Onshape > Onshape scores 55.7 (C) to Autodesk Platform Services's 44.3 (E) for cad generate. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side. - Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/autodesk-platform-services-vs-onshape - Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/autodesk-platform-services-vs-onshape.md (~4,600 tokens) - Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt) - API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json - MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key) - DNS: dig +short TXT .grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.. and .vs.. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev) - Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data) - Updated: 2026-11-03 Onshape scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against Autodesk Platform Services's 44.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Autodesk Platform Services leads on agent ergonomics. Both do cad generate. - Autodesk Platform Services: grade E, 44.3/100, rank #1154 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/autodesk-platform-services.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/autodesk-platform-services.json - Onshape: grade C, 55.7/100, rank #820 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/onshape.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/onshape.json - Best CAD, simulation and fabrication APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/cad/index.md - All 15 cad comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/cad/index.md ## Which one, for what ### Autodesk Platform Services (E) Good for: Agents that must process existing Autodesk files (Inventor, Revit, AutoCAD, Fusion) at scale with add-ins a team already has, or translate models for viewing. Ahead on: - Agent ergonomics, 52 against 46 Watch for: The Design Automation v3 guide, reference, quotas and rate limits did not render for our reader, and no OpenAPI spec for it is published in the SDK repository ### Onshape (C) Good for: Agents that read or change existing cloud CAD documents, run configurations, pull BOMs and drawings, or write FeatureScript for a team already on Onshape. Ahead on: - Reliability, 60 against 52 - Security & auth, 63 against 47 - Payments & pricing, 22 against 0 - Maintenance & community, 79 against 53 - Transparency & trust, 60 against 34 Also in its favour: - A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install Watch for: Every API key request must be signed with HMAC-SHA256 over the method, nonce, date, content type, path and query, and 307 redirects need a fresh signature ## Why the edge ### Maintenance & community: Onshape +26 - Autodesk Platform Services (53): Read for a closed service with open SDK sources. The aps-sdk-openapi repository's last commit is 16 September 2026 (Data Management spec), with Model Derivative on 12 August (20 of 30). Two dated spec changes in the last 90 days; SDK package release dates on npm and NuGet were not read (10 of 20). Stack Overflow tags, a fortnightly expert call, a bookable onboarding call and paid ADN support; GitHub issue response was not read because the API refused us (10 of 25). No APS server in the official MCP registry was looked for because the Autodesk MCP servers page could not be read; official SDKs on npm and NuGet are current per the README badges (10 of 15). SDK CI and dependency health unread (3 of 10). 20 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 3 = 53. - Onshape (79): Read for a closed service. API release notes rel-1.223 dated 30 October 2026 (30). Six dated releases from 17 July to 30 October, three weeks apart (20). A public changelog, forum.onshape.com and api-support@onshape.com; response times were not tested (12 of 15). No Onshape-owned server in the official MCP registry, where the only match is io.github.gpambrozio/onshape; the official Go client was pushed on 31 October 2026 and the TypeScript clients in June and September 2025 (12 of 15). The Go client is generated and its CI was not read; the multi-language onshape-clients repository is archived (5 of 10). 30 + 20 + 12 + 12 + 5 = 79. ### Transparency & trust: Onshape +26 - Autodesk Platform Services (34): Closed service. The APS terms of service are on www.autodesk.com and were not read, so terms clarity scores as absent (5 of 30). Privacy policy, data processing and retention statements are on the same host and unread (0 of 30). No deprecation policy or dated notices were readable; the docs pages that would carry them rendered empty (0 of 20). The status page names regional variants for the data APIs, which is the only location disclosure read; no subprocessor list was read (5 of 20). 5 + 0 + 0 + 5 = 10. These scores reflect what our reader could load, not a finding that the documents don't exist. - Onshape (60): Closed service with clear terms of 15 July 2020 naming PTC Inc. and Massachusetts law (15). The privacy policy has moved to ptc.com, which our reader could not fetch; the data disclosures page names subprocessors (AWS, Salesforce, SendGrid, Zendesk, Vanilla Forums, Crownpeak, Thought Industries, Stripe, Zuora) without retention periods, and neither the terms nor the disclosures say whether customer content trains AI (12 of 30). Deprecations are marked in dated release notes and flagged with an x-deprecated header, but no notice period is stated (12 of 20). Subprocessors are named and the status page lists hosting regions by continent; no formal data location statement was read (14 of 20). 15 + 12 + 12 + 14 = 53. ### Payments & pricing: Onshape +22 - Autodesk Platform Services (0): No x402, MPP or L402 in the specs or pages read (0). Pricing is on www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-platform-services/overview#pricing, where aps.autodesk.com/pricing redirects; www.autodesk.com/robots.txt answered 403, so no price was read and the line scores as absent (0). A free trial is referred to on the developer pages, but its terms and whether a card is needed were on the unread pages (0). A person signs in to the developer portal to create the app that holds the client id and secret (0). 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 0, the reading contentful, personio and coupa took on 7 October 2026 when their pricing pages were unreadable. - Onshape (22): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Plan prices are public per user per year, with no per-call price; extra API calls are sold by sales at an unpublished rate (10). The Free plan costs nothing for non-commercial use with public documents and a Professional trial needs no card; whether the Free plan asks for a card was not stated (12 of 20). A person signs up in a browser and creates the key or OAuth app (0). 0 + 10 + 12 + 0 = 22. ### Security & auth: Onshape +16 - Autodesk Platform Services (47): OAuth 2.0 with client credentials and authorisation code flows and named scopes (data:read, data:write, data:create, bucket scopes, code:all) in the published Authentication v2 spec, plus Secure Service Accounts for server workloads (30). Read-only scopes exist; no confirmation step before destructive calls was found (12 of 20). The engines execute add-ins and scripts on uploaded design files, and no prompt-injection guidance for agents was found on the pages read (5 of 15). No audit log or per-call visibility was found on the pages read (0 of 15). Autodesk's trust and security pages are on www.autodesk.com, unread, and aps.autodesk.com/.well-known/security.txt answered 406, and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was established from the pages read (0 of 20). 30 + 12 + 5 + 0 + 0 = 47. - Onshape (63): API keys scoped to permissions, revocable, two per individual account, with a signed request scheme; OAuth 2.0 authorisation code with 60-minute access tokens and refresh tokens revoked with the user's grant; no key expiry documented (26 of 30). Permission scopes allow read-only keys; no confirmation step before destructive calls and no approval gate on the MCP server beyond the App Store subscription (12 of 20). The MCP server reads FeatureScript errors and geometry from the document and no prompt-injection guidance was found (5 of 15). API usage counts are visible under Developer settings per company or user; no per-call audit log was found (6 of 15). SOC 2 Type 2 audited annually, AES-256 and TLS 1.2 with HSTS, paid researcher testing and security@onshape.com, but no security.txt (404), no public bug bounty and no advisories page (14 of 20). 26 + 12 + 5 + 6 + 14 = 63. ### Reliability: Onshape +8 - Autodesk Platform Services (52): Read with the hosted lines. health.autodesk.com is an Atlassian Statuspage listing APS components (Automation API, Model Derivative, Data Management, Developer Portal, Webhooks and the data model APIs) with history feeds (20). The history page didn't render for our reader; the RSS feed holds 20 items from 22 October to 2 November 2026, none naming an APS component, so most of the 90-day window is unread (15 of 30). Rate limits and quotas are documented on pages under /en/docs that rendered as empty shells, so no number was read (0). The OSS spec documents 429 with an instruction to wait and lengthen the wait on each attempt; no Retry-After header or idempotency guidance was found (7 of 15). No SLA found on the pages read (0). The Automation API is a released product with no beta label on its overview (10). 20 + 15 + 0 + 7 + 0 + 10 = 52. - Onshape (60): Read with the hosted lines on cad.onshape.com. Atlassian Statuspage at status.onshape.com with regional CAD service components and history feeds (20). The feed holds 18 incidents from 15 August to 30 October 2026, all degraded performance, delayed imports and exports or partial signup blocks, the longest 2 hours 42 minutes of export degradation on 15 September and imports, exports and notifications not working for 1 hour 42 minutes on 11 September; no full outage of the CAD service (18 of 30). Annual API call quotas are published per plan with numbers, while per-endpoint rate limits are said to vary by endpoint with no figure (8 of 15). 429 is documented without a header or backoff timing, 402 marks a spent quota, and no idempotency guidance was found (6 of 15). The terms promise commercially reasonable efforts and no SLA (0). The REST API is generally available; the FeatureScript MCP Server is an early-access Labs feature (8 of 10). 20 + 18 + 8 + 6 + 0 + 8 = 60. ### Agent ergonomics: Autodesk Platform Services +6 - Autodesk Platform Services (52): Data Management lists support filter and page parameters and Model Derivative returns per-object properties, so responses can be narrowed on the APIs with specs; the Automation API's job outputs are files (15 of 25). Pagination and filtering on the data APIs (15 of 20). Error responses are typed in the specs with reasons and the OSS spec explains 429, though the Automation API's error catalogue was unread (12 of 20). No idempotency key or safe-retry guidance was found; WorkItems are submitted and polled (0 of 20). Official SDKs in TypeScript (npm) and .NET (NuGet), but a Design Automation job needs an AppBundle, an Activity and a WorkItem and the add-in compiled against the desktop product (10 of 15). 15 + 15 + 12 + 0 + 10 = 52. - Onshape (46): Document and element endpoints take ids and the list endpoints take limit and offset, with no field selection documented in what we read; the MCP server's tool count is unknown (12 of 25). Pagination and filters on document lists, and revisions page (a paging loop was fixed in rel-1.219) (14 of 20). HTTP codes with 401, 402 and 429 meanings; the error body shape was on the unread response codes page (10 of 20). No idempotency keys; POSTs create microversions on every edit; no readOnlyHint or destructiveHint published for the MCP tools (2 of 20). Every API key request needs a Date header, a nonce and an HMAC-SHA256 signature, and 307 redirects need a new signature; official Go and TypeScript clients handle it (8 of 15). 12 + 14 + 10 + 2 + 8 = 46. ## Score by category | Category | Weight | Autodesk Platform Services | Onshape | Edge | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 52 | 60 | Onshape +8 | | Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 63 | Onshape +4 | | Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 52 | 46 | Autodesk Platform Services +6 | | Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 47 | 63 | Onshape +16 | | Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 22 | Onshape +22 | | Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 53 | 79 | Onshape +26 | | Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 34 | 60 | Onshape +26 | | Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | | | **Total** | | **44.3 · E** | **55.7 · C** | | ## Facts side by side | Fact | Autodesk Platform Services | Onshape | | --- | --- | --- | | Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API | | Vendor | Autodesk | PTC | | Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://fs-mcp.labs.onshape.app/mcp` | | Transports | | Streamable HTTP | | Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key | | Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium | | x402 | no | no | | Tools exposed | 0 | 0 | | Read-only variant documented | yes | no | | llms.txt | no | no | | Last release | 2026-09-16 | 2026-10-30 | | Terms last updated | no document linked | no date given | | Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read | | Customer content may train models | not read yet | not found in the text | | Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | yes | | Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | yes | | Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | yes | | Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | yes | | Popularity | none | 13 stars | ## Verdicts **Autodesk Platform Services.** OAuth 2.0 with scopes, public OpenAPI specs for six APIs and a status page with APS components make the platform callable by an agent that holds an app's credentials. The Automation API's own docs, quotas, pricing and terms sit on pages our reader could not load, so an agent must plan without published limits or rates. **Onshape.** Scoped API keys, OAuth 2.0 and versioned release notes every three weeks give an agent a stable REST surface over documents, parts, assemblies and drawings, and the Labs MCP server writes FeatureScript. Each request needs an HMAC signature and nonce, annual call quotas end in 402, per-endpoint limits are unpublished, and robots.txt closes the OpenAPI explorer's host to readers. ## Before you call either ### Autodesk Platform Services 1. Expect to hold an APS app's client id and secret, mint a two-legged token with the scopes the call needs, and refresh it; a person creates the app in the developer portal 2. For the Automation API, the AppBundle (compiled add-in or script), Activity and WorkItem must exist before a job runs; the engine runs the add-in, so geometry edits are written in the desktop product's API, not in a request body 3. Back off exponentially on 429, as the OSS spec asks, since no numeric limits were readable; check health.autodesk.com for the Automation API component before retrying failures 4. Do not assume a price per job or translation; have the owner read the pricing page, which our reader could not 5. Use data:read and read-only scopes for inspection tasks and ask the owner before data:write or bucket:delete, since no confirmation step is documented ### Onshape 1. Sign every API key request with a Date header within 5 minutes, a unique 16-character On-Nonce and `Authorization: On :HmacSHA256:`; prefer OAuth 2.0 bearer tokens and refresh on 401 2. Count calls against the plan's annual quota (2,500 per user on Free) and treat 402 as quota exhausted, not a payment request; 4xx and 5xx responses do not count 3. Put the API version in the path (api/v17) and pin it, since unversioned calls use v0 and unknown versions fall back to the newest 4. On 429 back off and reduce redundant calls; no Retry-After or numeric limit is published, and imports and exports were the component most often delayed in the 90-day record 5. For FeatureScript work, subscribe to the FeatureScript MCP Server in the App Store first, then `claude mcp add --transport http onshape https://fs-mcp.labs.onshape.app/mcp` and authorise in the browser; use `/mcp` to re-authenticate ## Questions ### Which is better for AI agents, Autodesk Platform Services or Onshape? Onshape scores 55.7 (C) on agent readiness against Autodesk Platform Services's 44.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Autodesk Platform Services leads on agent ergonomics. ### Do Autodesk Platform Services and Onshape need an API key? Autodesk Platform Services uses an OAuth sign-in. Onshape takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. ### Can an agent call Autodesk Platform Services and Onshape without installing anything? No hosted endpoint is listed for Autodesk Platform Services. Onshape has a hosted endpoint at https://fs-mcp.labs.onshape.app/mcp. ## For agents - This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/autodesk-platform-services-vs-onshape.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/autodesk-platform-services-vs-onshape.min.md - Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "autodesk-platform-services", "b": "onshape"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare autodesk-platform-services onshape` - Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/autodesk-platform-services.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/onshape.json ## Other comparisons with Autodesk Platform Services or Onshape - [Adam vs Autodesk Platform Services](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adam-cad-vs-autodesk-platform-services.md) - [Adam vs Onshape](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adam-cad-vs-onshape.md) - [Autodesk Platform Services vs nTop](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/autodesk-platform-services-vs-ntop.md) - [Autodesk Platform Services vs Zoo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/autodesk-platform-services-vs-zoo.md) - [nTop vs Onshape](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ntop-vs-onshape.md) - [Autodesk Platform Services vs SimScale](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/autodesk-platform-services-vs-simscale.md) - [Onshape vs SimScale](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/onshape-vs-simscale.md) - [Onshape vs Zoo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/onshape-vs-zoo.md) --- Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp