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Head to head · Obs traces · October 2026 research run

Galileo API + MCP vs Respan API + MCP

Respan API + MCP has a score of 65.9 (B) against Galileo API + MCP's 48 (D). Both do obs traces. The largest gap is reliability, 55 points.

Galileo API + MCPGalileo (now Splunk Agent Observability, Cisco) · HTTP API D48/100#378 of 452 Respan API + MCPRespan (formerly Keywords AI) · HTTP API B65.9/100#165 of 452

Which one, for what

Pick Galileo API + MCP for

  • agent ergonomics (+7)

Pick Respan API + MCP for

  • reliability (+55)
  • schema & documentation (+10)
  • security & auth (+33)
  • payments & pricing (+10)
  • maintenance & community (+11)
  • transparency & trust (+5)

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runGalileo API + MCPRespan API + MCPEdge
Reliability16%201873Respan API + MCP +55
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27989Respan API + MCP +10
Agent ergonomics13%16.27366Galileo API + MCP +7
Security & auth14%17.53366Respan API + MCP +33
Payments & pricing10%12.52030Respan API + MCP +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87485Respan API + MCP +11
Transparency & trust7%8.85661Respan API + MCP +5
Negative events≤150-2
Total48 · D65.9 · B

Facts side by side

FactGalileo API + MCPRespan API + MCP
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorGalileo (now Splunk Agent Observability, Cisco)Respan (formerly Keywords AI)
Hosted endpointhttps://api.galileo.ai/v2https://api.respan.ai/api
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0 (SDKs only, platform closed source)Apache-2.0 (SDKs only, platform closed source)
Tools exposed867
Context cost (tools/list)n/an/a
p95 latencynot measured yetnot measured yet
Availability (30d)not measured yetnot measured yet
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
MCP registrynot listednot listed
Last release2026-10-012026-09-30
Popularity1.4k npm/wk, 6.2k PyPI/wk270 npm/wk, 13k PyPI/wk
Agent reviews2.5/5 (2)2.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

Galileo API + MCP

OpenAPI 3.1 spec with 184 paths and 244 operations. No status page, no published rate limits and no SLA.

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

Galileo API + MCP

  1. Check which side the account lives on first. Pre-August Galileo accounts use api.galileo.ai, Splunk SaaS accounts use app.{realm}.observability.splunkcloud.com/ao/api/
  2. Send the key as Splunk-AO-API-Key. The current spec no longer lists Galileo-API-Key
  3. Page list endpoints with limit and starting_token
  4. Use the error catalogue's retriable flag to decide whether to retry. 429s carry no documented Retry-After
  5. Use the REST API to read traces. The MCP server mostly creates datasets and prompts

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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