# Clerk MCP server vs Keycard (slim)

> Clerk scores 61.9 (C) to Keycard's 49.3 (D) for oauth for agents. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/clerk-mcp-vs-keycard.md (~3,750 tokens) · this version ~1,930 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/clerk-mcp-vs-keycard.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/clerk-mcp-vs-keycard
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
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Clerk MCP server scores 61.9 (C) on agent readiness against Keycard's 49.3 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Keycard leads on security & auth. Both do oauth for agents.

- Clerk MCP server: C 61.9, rank #586 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/clerk-mcp.min.md
- Keycard: D 49.3, rank #1099 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/keycard.min.md
- Clerk MCP server, good for Developers building on Clerk who want a coding agent to set up applications, users, domains and production instances. Ahead on Reliability, 65 against 15; Payments & pricing, 40 against 30; Transparency & trust, 57 against 45. Also No incidents deducted, where Keycard loses 3 points for them.
- Keycard, 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 Security & auth, 86 against 65.

| Category | Clerk MCP server | Keycard |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 65 | 15 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 65 | 61 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 63 | 60 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 65 | 86 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 40 | 30 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 77 | 79 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 57 | 45 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Clerk MCP server | Keycard |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Clerk, Inc. | Keycard Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.clerk.com/mcp` | `https://api.keycard.ai` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Licence | none | MIT (SDKs), Apache-2.0 (keycard-python API client), platform closed, BYOC or on-prem on Enterprise |
| Tools exposed | 14 | none |
| MCP registry | `io.github.clerk/mcp-server` | not listed |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-15 |
| Terms last updated | not read yet | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | not read yet | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | none | 1 stars, 52 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, Clerk MCP server +50: Clerk MCP server 65 (Graded as a hosted service. incident.io status page at status.clerk.com with components for authentication, sessions, webhooks and SCIM, but none for the MCP server (15). The feed shows several resolved incidents since August (an upstream SMS issue on 29 October, Apple sign-in for development instances, an incident across all components on 3 November, resolved), none read as a long core outage (20). Backend API limits published with numbers (1,000 requests per 10 seconds in production), not for the MCP server itself (10 of 15). 429 with Retry-After documented, no idempotency guidance for writes (10 of 15). No SLA found; Business support has 'No response-time SLA' (0). The MCP server isn't labelled beta (10). 15 + 20 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 10 = 65.); Keycard 15 (status.keycard.ai answers robots.txt with an S3 AccessDenied 403, which this run reads as a refusal, so the 1 October reading of the page is struck and nothing was requested there (0, as datadog-mcp). Its history was never readable (5). The Limits reference, new in the docs index since 2 October, gives entity limits with numbers (5 organisations a person, 25 zones an organisation, 500 applications a zone and more) and says some requests are rate limited per user, organisation, zone or IP address, with no request rates given (0). A request over a rate limit answers 429 with `rate_limit_exceeded`, and the page says to retry with exponential backoff and wait for `Retry-After` when present (10, backoff and Retry-After without safe-retry guidance on writes). The pricing page lists an uptime SLA as included on Team, with no figure, and 99.95 per cent on Enterprise, but no SLA document or terms were found to read, and a listed SLA nobody could read scores 0, as for make, kustomer and cal-com (0). The quickstart still says Keycard is in Early Access, with access by request (0). 0+5+0+10+0+0 = 15.)
- Security & auth, Keycard +21: Clerk MCP server 65 (OAuth with a published scope table and one workspace per connection (30). Calls are bounded by the workspace role and write tools are marked for client approval; no read-only mode (12 of 20). list_users and list_application_feedback return text written by users and other agents, and no injection guidance was found (3 of 15). No audit log of MCP calls found (0). security.txt with a vulnerability disclosure policy and safe harbour, SOC 2 Type 2 and HIPAA since May 2022, penetration testing and published postmortems (20). 30 + 12 + 3 + 0 + 20 = 65.); Keycard 86 (OAuth 2.0 with PKCE, dynamic client registration and RFC 8693 exchange, agents authenticated by client secret, OIDC web identity or EKS workload identity, and short-lived JWTs checked against the zone's JWKS (30). Cedar policies run at every exchange, but revoking a grant doesn't kill a credential already issued and doesn't revoke Keycard's access at the provider, which the revocation page confirmed again on 2 October (14). The service returns credentials, not untrusted content (10). Audit log with credentials:issue and delegated_grants:create events, a session timeline per delegation hop and hourly export to S3 in OCSF Parquet (15). security.txt valid to 2027-06-12, and the SafeBase trust centre lists SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 reports and a penetration test report on request. No bug bounty or public advisories found (17).)
- Transparency & trust, Clerk MCP server +12: Clerk MCP server 57 (Closed service under terms naming Clerk, Inc., last updated 1 October 2026 (15). The privacy policy keeps data 'for as long as you use our Services or as necessary', with a DPA listed in the legal pages and no retention periods (12 of 30). No deprecation policy for the MCP server found (5 of 20). Subprocessors referenced through the DPA, list not read (8 of 20). 15 + 12 + 5 + 8 = 40.); Keycard 45 (SDKs under MIT and Apache-2.0, but there's no terms of service for the platform. keycard.ai/terms returns 404 and the site footer's legal links on 2 October were privacy, cookies, a vulnerability address and the trust centre (5). Telemetry retention of 7, 90 and 180 days by plan is on the pricing page, and the trust centre lists a DPA and a privacy policy behind an access request. The privacy page's body still didn't load for us (10). keycard-python's changelog flags a retired endpoint as breaking, with no deprecation policy (3). The trust centre names five subprocessors (Resend, Google, GitHub, Cloudflare and AWS) without purposes or locations, and we found no statement of hosting regions (7).)
- Payments & pricing, Clerk MCP server +10: Clerk MCP server 40 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-unit prices are public ($0.02 per retained user over the included 50,000, $0.01 per SMS) (20). Hobby is free with no card (20). A person signs up and approves OAuth in a browser (0). 0 + 20 + 20 + 0 + 0 = 40.); Keycard 30 (No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Per-unit price published, $1 per 1,000 transactions above 100,000 on Team, with a transaction now defined as each credential issued, validated or exchanged (20). Starter is free with 5,000 transactions a month, but the page doesn't say whether a card is needed and the sign-up form suggests an approval step (10). A person signs up in a browser (0).)