Head to head · Design templates · October 2026 research run

Creatomate vs Robolly

Creatomate scores 49.6 (D) on agent readiness against Robolly's 48.4 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Robolly leads on reliability and agent ergonomics. Both do design templates.

Best programmatic image and design asset APIs for AI agents · All 153 assets comparisons

Which one, for what

Creatomate D

Best for Teams that render video, images and GIFs from templates or JSON and want an agent to draft templates and start renders through MCP.

Ahead on

  • Maintenance & community, 54 against 5

Watch for

No status page, incident history or SLA found. status.creatomate.com does not resolve

Robolly D

Best for Template-driven images, PDFs and short videos for marketers and developers who want a hosted editor and simple synchronous calls.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 48 against 40
  • Agent ergonomics, 75 against 67

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

No OpenAPI or other machine-readable contract found

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Maintenance & community Creatomate +49

Creatomate 54

No changelog. Dated releases since 6 August are the n8n node 0.2.0 (11 August, per the 8 October npm reading), the rebuilt n8n node v1.0.0 (11 September) and v1.0.1 (19 September, a category metadata fix, half), and @creatomate/preview 1.6.1 (3 September, removing a dependency and type definitions from the build, half). The newest release that changes code is n8n v1.0.0, 54 days before the check (20). Three counted entries in 90 days (20, cause evidence; it drops to 0 after 9 November when 0.2.0 leaves the window). Support by email, no public changelog or forum found, and two open GitHub issues across the libraries per the 8 October check (5). The Node library was last tagged 1.2.1 on 23 September 2024 and calls /v1, the PHP library was last pushed on 21 October 2024, and the Preview SDK is current (7). No CI in the Node repository (2). 20+20+5+7+2 = 54.

Robolly 5

No changelog, release notes or dated API change was found. The sitemap marks every docs page as modified on 4 November 2026, which reads as a site rebuild rather than a change, so it isn't counted (0). No dated changes since 8 August (0). Support by email, with chat on higher plans; not tested (5 of 15). Not in the official MCP registry and no SDKs (0). No public package or repository (0). 0 + 0 + 5 + 0 + 0 = 5.

Reliability Robolly +8

Creatomate 40

Hosted lines. No status page found. status.creatomate.com still has no DNS record and no page we read links to one (0). No readable incident history (5). 30 requests per 10 seconds per account, documented in the API reference for agents (15). The same page documents X-RateLimit-* headers on every response and Retry-After on 429 with "wait that long, do not retry immediately", but no idempotency key for renders, which are writes (10). The 8 October first-hand header reading came from a request to the product's API and is struck; the docs carry the same facts. No SLA found (0). The REST API and MCP server carry no beta label (10). 0+5+15+10+0+10 = 40.

Robolly 48

Hosted lines. The footer links an UptimeRobot status page, but it loads its figures from /api/, which stats.uptimerobot.com's robots.txt disallows, so the page showed no monitors or history (10 of 20 for a page that exists) and no history was read (5). A hard limit of 3 renders a second is published (15). The rate-limit error code and advice to send renders one at a time, and identical renders are cached for 45 days at no cost, which makes a retry safe; there's no Retry-After or backoff interval (8 of 15). No SLA found (0). The API isn't labelled beta (10). 10 + 5 + 15 + 8 + 0 + 10 = 48.

Agent ergonomics Robolly +8

Creatomate 67

Eight MCP tools on the vendor's list, re-read on 4 November, definitions unseen, and the template list omits sources (22). A tags filter on the template list, with no pagination, limit or render list found (6). The API reference documents a hint and a documentation URL on 400, 401, 404 and 429, a hint on 402 and 500, plus advisory errors and warnings and a free dry_run (20). No idempotency key. dry_run and status polling are safe, and template delete is now described as a soft delete that an open editor can restore; MCP annotations were not readable (8). template_id alone starts a render, and the Node and PHP libraries are official but last published in 2024 (11). 22+6+20+8+11 = 67.

Robolly 75

Nine MCP tools (25). The renders list pages with a cursor, and templates are found by name (14 of 20). Errors carry errorCode and developerMessage with eight documented codes (17 of 20). Identical renders are cached for 45 days, so repeats are free and safe, the MCP server has no delete tool, and annotations couldn't be read on the closed server (12 of 20). Renders return the file synchronously by default, but there's no SDK (7 of 15). 25 + 14 + 17 + 12 + 7 = 75.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCreatomateRobollyEdge
Reliability16%204048Robolly +8
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25357Robolly +4
Agent ergonomics13%16.26775Robolly +8
Security & auth14%17.54847Creatomate +1
Payments & pricing10%12.53535even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.8545Creatomate +49
Transparency & trust7%8.85249Creatomate +3
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 49.6/100D 48.4/100

Facts side by side

FactCreatomateRobolly
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorCreatomateAvantis Innovations LLC (Robolly)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.creatomate.com/v2https://api.robolly.com/v1
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidPaid
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Creatomate's Terms and Conditions. The Node, PHP and Preview SDK libraries on GitHub are MITClosed service under the Robolly terms of use (effective 8 April 2026)
Tools exposed89
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-09-19none
Terms last updated2022-06-272026-04-08
Privacy policy last updated2022-06-272026-04-08
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity9 stars, 13k npm/wknone
Agent reviews3.3/5 (4)none

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Creatomate

A hosted MCP server with eight tools and OAuth with PKCE sits beside a small REST API whose errors carry a hint and a documentation link, a documented rate limit with Retry-After, and a free dry_run. No status page, changelog, OpenAPI file or security contact was found, and the terms and privacy policy date from June 2022.

Robolly

Robolly's nine MCP tools, synchronous renders, typed error codes and free cached re-renders keep template rendering cheap and predictable for an agent, and OAuth connections can be revoked per client. There is no OpenAPI file, changelog or dated release, and API access starts at $39 a month after a 7-day trial.

Before you call either

Creatomate

  1. Send "dry_run": true to POST /v2/renders before a paid render. It returns valid, errors, warnings and the effective source
  2. Read warnings on every render response. A modification keyed to an unknown element or property name is ignored without an error
  3. Keep under 30 requests per 10 seconds across the whole account, and wait for Retry-After on a 429
  4. Download each file when the webhook fires. Renders, their URLs and their status records are deleted after 30 days
  5. Use render_scale 0.5 for draft videos, about a quarter of the credits, and remember MCP create_render spends credits without a confirmation step from the server

Robolly

  1. Call get_template_modifications before render to learn the keys a template accepts
  2. Send renders one at a time; the API refuses more than 3 a second with rate-limit
  3. Repeat an identical render freely; it is cached for 45 days and costs nothing
  4. Poll get_render after render_video, since video renders are queued
  5. Stop on render-limit-exhausted and tell the user the monthly credits are spent

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Creatomate or Robolly?

Creatomate scores 49.6 (D) on agent readiness against Robolly's 48.4 (D), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Robolly leads on reliability and agent ergonomics.

Do Creatomate and Robolly need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Creatomate and Robolly without installing anything?

Yes. Creatomate has a hosted endpoint at https://api.creatomate.com/v2 and Robolly at https://api.robolly.com/v1.

Other comparisons with Creatomate or Robolly

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