# Google Drive API + MCP vs Tigris

> Google Drive API + MCP has a score of 78.6 (A) against Tigris's 44.6 (E). Both do storage share. The largest gap is reliability, 55 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-05

Google Drive API + MCP has a score of 78.6 (A) against Tigris's 44.6 (E). Both do storage share. The largest gap is reliability, 55 points.

- Google Drive API + MCP: grade A, 78.6/100, rank #12 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/google-drive-api.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/google-drive-api.json
- Tigris: grade E, 44.6/100, rank #404 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tigris.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/tigris.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Google Drive API + MCP for reliability (+55), schema & documentation (+33), agent ergonomics (+32), security & auth (+35), payments & pricing (+5), maintenance & community (+8), transparency & trust (+23).

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

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Google Drive API + MCP | Tigris | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 90 | 35 | Google Drive API + MCP +55 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 50 | Google Drive API + MCP +33 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 85 | 53 | Google Drive API + MCP +32 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 86 | 51 | Google Drive API + MCP +35 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 30 | Google Drive API + MCP +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 85 | 77 | Google Drive API + MCP +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 51 | Google Drive API + MCP +23 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| **Total** | | **78.6 · A** | **44.6 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Google Drive API + MCP | Tigris |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Google | Tigris Data |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://www.googleapis.com/drive/v3` | `https://t3.storage.dev` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | 8 | none |
| 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 | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-30 |
| Popularity | 12k stars, 1.3M npm/wk, 29.8M PyPI/wk | 4 stars, 20 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.4/5 (8) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Google Drive API + MCP.** No charge for API calls within quota, counted in quota units per minute per project and per user. OAuth consent, scope verification and a Cloud project before an agent can list a folder.

**Tigris.** No egress fees, and one endpoint (t3.storage.dev) with region auto for every location. 16 status incidents between 4 July and 2 October 2026, including outages in US regions on 31 July and 2 August.

## Before you call either

### Google Drive API + MCP

1. Ask for drive.file rather than drive; it needs no verification and covers files the app created or the user picked
2. Use uploadType=resumable for anything over 5 MB and send chunks in multiples of 256 KB
3. For a link that expires, share to a user or group with expirationTime; a type=anyone permission can't expire, so delete it yourself
4. Pass fields= on files.list and files.get to cut the response, and page with pageToken
5. Back off exponentially on 429 rateLimitExceeded and 403 userRateLimitExceeded; 403 storageQuotaExceeded won't clear by retrying

### Tigris

1. Point the AWS SDK at https://t3.storage.dev with region `auto`; the stdio MCP README still shows the older fly.storage.tigris.dev endpoint
2. Ask for an access key with a ReadOnly or ReadWrite role on one bucket rather than an org-wide key
3. Keep presigned URLs short; Tigris accepts up to 90 days
4. Don't call tigris_list_objects on a large bucket; it walks every object with no limit or prefix
5. Use @tigrisdata/iam 2.6.0 or later before writing policies with conditions

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