# Baserun vs Respan API + MCP

> Respan API + MCP has a score of 65.9 (B) against Baserun's 7.3 (F). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 85 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserun-vs-respan
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- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserun-vs-respan.min.md (~380 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/baserun-vs-respan.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Respan API + MCP has a score of 65.9 (B) against Baserun's 7.3 (F). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 85 points.

- Baserun: grade F, 7.3/100, rank retired, not ranked. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/baserun.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/baserun.json
- Respan API + MCP: grade B, 65.9/100, rank #165 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/respan.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/respan.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Baserun for nothing in particular (no category where it leads by five points or more).

Pick Respan API + MCP for reliability (+73), schema & documentation (+74), agent ergonomics (+61), security & auth (+61), payments & pricing (+30), maintenance & community (+85), transparency & trust (+25).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Baserun | Respan API + MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 0 | 73 | Respan API + MCP +73 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 15 | 89 | Respan API + MCP +74 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 5 | 66 | Respan API + MCP +61 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 5 | 66 | Respan API + MCP +61 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 0 | 30 | Respan API + MCP +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 0 | 85 | Respan API + MCP +85 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 36 | 61 | Respan API + MCP +25 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **7.3 · F** | **65.9 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Baserun | Respan API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Baserun | Respan (formerly Keywords AI) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.baserun.ai` | `https://api.respan.ai/api` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | Apache-2.0 (SDKs only, platform closed source) |
| Tools exposed | none | 67 |
| 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 | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2024-06-26 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 115 npm/wk, 209 PyPI/wk | 270 npm/wk, 13k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 1/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Baserun.** SDKs were MIT licensed and the Python source is still public at github.com/baserun-ai/baserun-py. Service offline since late 2024. api.baserun.ai doesn't resolve and app.baserun.ai serves an expired certificate.

**Respan API + MCP.** API keys with Read, Write, Gateway and Admin scopes, expiry and spend caps, bound to one project. 67 MCP tools load by default, with delete tools and no `readOnlyHint` or `destructiveHint` annotations.

## Before you call either

### Baserun

1. Don't install `baserun` from PyPI or npm. Nothing answers behind it
2. Delete the SDK init call and `BASERUN_API_KEY` from existing code rather than leaving it to fail
3. Ignore docs.baserun.ai. It describes a service that no longer runs and doesn't say so

### Respan API + MCP

1. Create a key with only the Read scope for agents that analyse logs. New keys get Read, Write and Gateway by default
2. Set `Respan-Enabled-Tools` to a short list such as list_traces,get_trace_tree,list_logs. All 67 tools load otherwise
3. Pass `filters` to `list_logs` rather than paging through everything. The default window is the last hour
4. Call `list_organizations` first when results look empty over OAuth. Every tool acts on the active organisation only
5. Append `.md` to any docs URL for clean Markdown

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