Head to head · Reading contacts · October 2026 research run
Google People API vs Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API
Google People API and Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 65.2 (B) and 64.6 (B). Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API leads on reliability. Both do reading contacts.
Which one, for what
Best for Agents that read or maintain a Google user's address book or look people up in a Workspace directory.
Ahead on
- Security & auth, 86 against 72
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 76
Also in its favour
- No incidents deducted, where Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API loses 4 points for them
Watch for
No status page covers Contacts or the People API
Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API B
Best for Agents working in Microsoft 365 tenants or with Outlook.com address books, especially to find who a user works with.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 60 against 30
Watch for
No idempotency key on contact creation, so retries can duplicate
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Google People API | Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 30 | 60 | Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API +30 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 79 | 83 | Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API +4 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 83 | 83 | even |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 86 | 72 | Google People API +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 35 | 35 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 83 | 76 | Google People API +7 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 71 | 69 | Google People API +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -4 | |
| Total | B 65.2/100 | B 64.6/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Google People API | Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Microsoft | |
| Hosted endpoint | https://people.googleapis.com/v1 | https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0 |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth |
| Pricing | Free | Your plan |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary service under the Google APIs Terms of Service. Client libraries are Apache-2.0 | MIT (SDKs) |
| Tools exposed | 3 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | yes |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-12 | 2026-03-12 |
| Terms last updated | 2021-11-09 | 2025-10-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-01 |
| Customer content may train models | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 177k npm/wk | 834 stars, 2.3M npm/wk, 1.6M PyPI/wk |
Verdicts
Google People API
Covers saved contacts, contact groups, "Other contacts" and the Workspace directory under 12 OAuth scopes, with seven-day sync tokens and a read-only MCP server that warns against prompt injection. No status page covers it, quota numbers are only in the Cloud console, and searches need a warmup call first.
Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API
Covers Outlook personal contacts with delta sync and a people API that ranks the people a user works with and supports fuzzy search, all under separate read and write permissions. Contact creates have no idempotency key, the status page needs JavaScript, and Microsoft has no current MCP server for contacts.
Before you call either
Google People API
- Send an empty searchContacts query first, wait a few seconds, then search
- Always pass personFields, such as names,emailAddresses,phoneNumbers, or the call fails
- Store nextSyncToken and do a full sync when you get EXPIRED_SYNC_TOKEN
- Send writes for one user one at a time and include the etag on updates
- Ask for contacts.readonly unless the task must create or change contacts
Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API
- Use /me/people?$search= for fuzzy lookups and /me/contacts for the saved address book, since they return different sets
- Keep the @odata.deltaLink from the contact delta function and call it on the next run
- Check for an existing contact with $filter on emailAddresses before creating one
- Honour Retry-After on 429 and keep to 4 parallel calls per mailbox
- Ask for Contacts.Read and People.Read unless the task must change contacts
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Google People API or Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API?
Google People API and Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 65.2 (B) and 64.6 (B). Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API leads on reliability.
Do Google People API and Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API need an API key?
Both use an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call Google People API and Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API without installing anything?
Yes. Google People API has a hosted endpoint at https://people.googleapis.com/v1 and Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API at https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0.
Other comparisons with Google People API or Microsoft Graph People and Contacts API
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/google-people-api-vs-microsoft-graph-people.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/google-people-api.json·/api/v1/tools/microsoft-graph-people.json - From a terminal
anchor compare google-people-api microsoft-graph-people(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "google-people-api", "b": "microsoft-graph-people"}at/mcp, no key