# Keycard vs Scalekit AgentKit

> Scalekit AgentKit has a score of 72.1 (BB) against Keycard's 56.3 (C). Both do auth oauth. The largest gap is reliability, 40 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/keycard-vs-scalekit-agentkit
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/keycard-vs-scalekit-agentkit.md (~1,550 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/keycard-vs-scalekit-agentkit.min.md (~330 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/keycard-vs-scalekit-agentkit.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-04

Scalekit AgentKit has a score of 72.1 (BB) against Keycard's 56.3 (C). Both do auth oauth. The largest gap is reliability, 40 points.

- Keycard: grade C, 56.3/100, rank #303 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/keycard.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/keycard.json
- Scalekit AgentKit: grade BB, 72.1/100, rank #74 of 452. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/scalekit-agentkit.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/scalekit-agentkit.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Keycard for security & auth (+20).

Pick Scalekit AgentKit for reliability (+40), schema & documentation (+26), agent ergonomics (+23), payments & pricing (+10), transparency & trust (+23).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Keycard | Scalekit AgentKit | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 35 | 75 | Scalekit AgentKit +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 61 | 87 | Scalekit AgentKit +26 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 60 | 83 | Scalekit AgentKit +23 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 86 | 66 | Keycard +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 40 | Scalekit AgentKit +10 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 79 | 80 | Scalekit AgentKit +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 45 | 68 | Scalekit AgentKit +23 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **56.3 · C** | **72.1 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Keycard | Scalekit AgentKit |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Keycard Labs | Scalekit |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.keycard.ai` | `https://{env}.scalekit.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (SDKs), Apache-2.0 (keycard-python API client), platform closed, BYOC or on-prem on Enterprise | MIT (SDKs), platform closed, self-hosted on Enterprise |
| Tools exposed | none | 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 | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-22 | 2026-09-29 |
| Popularity | 1 stars, 52 npm/wk | 6 stars, 11k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 2.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Keycard.** Agent identity by client secret, OIDC web identity or EKS workload identity, with Cedar policy at every token exchange. Early Access with sign-up by request, and no terms of service page.

**Scalekit AgentKit.** 500+ connectors, including remote MCP servers over OAuth 2.1 with DCR. No rate limits or idempotency documented for Scalekit's own API.

## Before you call either

### Keycard

1. Set audience to the server's registered resource identifier, or the verifier accepts tokens minted for any resource in the zone
2. Check `AccessContext.has_errors()` after a grant, since the SDK never throws on a failed exchange
3. Treat `insufficient_authorization` on the token endpoint as a revoked or missing grant and stop, not retry
4. Keep credentials short-lived, because revocation only stops the next issuance
5. Pin keycardai-mcp to a major version, since 1.0.0 and 2.0.0 shipped a day apart

### Scalekit AgentKit

1. Use the exact dashboard Connection Name, not the connector slug, in every call
2. Call `POST /api/v1/tools:search` with top_k instead of listing every tool
3. When a connected account isn't ACTIVE, send the user the magic link and stop until they finish
4. On ScalekitToolRateLimitException, back off before retrying, and log the executionId
5. Mint a fresh virtual MCP session token per user per run and let it expire

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