Head to head · App automation · October 2026 research run
One vs Smithery
One scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Smithery's 50.7 (D), and leads in every scored category. Both do app automation.
Best agent tool access platforms · All 28 tool access comparisons
Which one, for what
One B
Good for A person or small team that wants one MCP entry with a small tool footprint across many SaaS accounts, with access set per connection and a free plan.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 82 against 60
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 65
- Security & auth, 69 against 50
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 10
- Maintenance & community, 86 against 43
- Transparency & trust, 63 against 46
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
Watch for
The remote server's tools changed from four to three by 30 September 2026, and the site's changelog, last dated 13 July 2026, has no entry for it
Smithery D
Good for A developer who wants many MCP servers behind one credential and one endpoint, with per-user connections and short-lived scoped tokens.
No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.
Watch for
No terms of service are linked from the site, the docs or the footer. The privacy notice of 20 June 2025 is the only legal document found
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | One | Smithery | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 82 | 60 | One +22 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 77 | 76 | One +1 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 73 | 65 | One +8 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 69 | 50 | One +19 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 30 | 10 | One +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 86 | 43 | One +43 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 63 | 46 | One +17 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -2 | |
| Total | 66.6 · B | 50.7 · D |
Facts side by side
| Fact | One | Smithery |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | MCP server | HTTP API |
| Vendor | One Systems, Inc. | Smithery (Arcade.dev) |
| Hosted endpoint | https://mcp.withone.ai/mcp | https://api.smithery.ai |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under One's Terms of Service. The local MCP server package @withone/mcp is MIT. The CLI package @withone/cli has no licence field or licence file. The knowledge base is under the One Knowledge Commons Licence v1.0, which is not an OSI licence | Proprietary hosted service, with no terms of service found. The CLI (smithery) is AGPL-3.0, the TypeScript client (@smithery/api) is Apache-2.0 and the credential layer agent.pw is MIT |
| Tools exposed | 3 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | ai.withone/mcp | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-10-06 | 2026-07-20 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-03-06 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-07-22 | 2025-06-20 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | |
| Popularity | 11 stars, 681 npm/wk | 840 stars, 2.7k npm/wk |
Verdicts
One
One's remote MCP server has three tools, OAuth 2.1 sign-in with PKCE and a consent screen that sets read only, read and write, full or per-action access for each connection. A person must sign in through a browser, the SOC 2 audit is unfinished, and the site's changelog stops at 13 July 2026.
Smithery
Service tokens can be limited by namespace, resource, operation and connection metadata, with a lifetime of at most 24 hours. No terms of service, rate limits or SLA were found, the pricing page could not be read, and the newest client release is from 20 July 2026.
Before you call either
One
- Call
list_one_integrationsfirst and read each connection'saccessfield. When the policy isactions, run those ids directly without callingfind_one_actions - Send every operation a task needs in one
find_one_actionscall, up to 10requests, each a platform and a short intent with no IDs, names or message text - When a document comes back as a digest, call
find_one_actionsagain withloadand asectionname. Don't guess parameters the digest left out - After a timeout on
execute_one_action, check whether the write took effect before sending it again. No idempotency key is documented - A 403 for a call outside the grant won't succeed on retry. Ask the user to widen the grant in the dashboard or reconnect
Smithery
- Keep the API key on the backend and hand an agent a service token limited to
connectionswithreadandexecuteand ametadatamatch - Create connections with
PUT /connect/{namespace}/{connectionId}, which is an upsert, and checkstatus.statebefore calling a tool - On
auth_requiredorinput_required, send the person tosetupUrl, then retry with the sameconnectionId - Tool names on the namespace MCP endpoint are prefixed with the connection ID, such as
user-123-github.search_repositories - Do not rely on
smithery skillcommands. Version 1.1.1 of the CLI removed them
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, One or Smithery?
One scores 66.6 (B) on agent readiness against Smithery's 50.7 (D), and leads in every scored category.
Do One and Smithery need an API key?
Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.
Can an agent call One and Smithery without installing anything?
Yes. One has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.withone.ai/mcp and Smithery at https://api.smithery.ai.
Other comparisons with One or Smithery
- Composio (API + MCP) vs One
- Composio (API + MCP) vs Smithery
- Merge Agent Handler vs One
- Merge Agent Handler vs Smithery
- One vs StackOne
- One vs Unified.to MCP Server
- One vs Zapier MCP (agent actions)
- Smithery vs StackOne
- Smithery vs Unified.to MCP Server
- Smithery vs Zapier MCP (agent actions)
- letme vs One
- letme vs Smithery
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/one-vs-smithery.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/one.json·/api/v1/tools/smithery.json - From a terminal
anchor compare one smithery(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "one", "b": "smithery"}at/mcp, no key