Head to head · Hitl approve · October 2026 research run
Permit MCP Gateway vs Temporal
Temporal has a score of 77.2 (BB) against Permit MCP Gateway's 54.5 (C). Both do hitl approve. The largest gap is maintenance & community, 47 points.
Permit MCP GatewayPermit.io · Model platform
C54.5/100#321 of 452
TemporalTemporal Technologies · Model platform
BB77.2/100#21 of 452
Which one, for what
Pick Permit MCP Gateway for
No category where it leads by five points or more.
Pick Temporal for
- reliability (+38)
- schema & documentation (+38)
- security & auth (+6)
- payments & pricing (+10)
- maintenance & community (+47)
- transparency & trust (+25)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Permit MCP Gateway | Temporal | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 47 | 85 | Temporal +38 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 53 | 91 | Temporal +38 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 83 | 85 | Temporal +2 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 80 | 86 | Temporal +6 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 10 | 20 | Temporal +10 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 43 | 90 | Temporal +47 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 45 | 70 | Temporal +25 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 54.5 · C | 77.2 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Permit MCP Gateway | Temporal |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Model platform | Model platform |
| Vendor | Permit.io | Temporal Technologies |
| Hosted endpoint | https://{subdomain}.agent.security/mcp | no (local only) |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Paid | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | MIT |
| 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 | yes |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-15 |
| Popularity | none | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (2) | 3.6/5 (8) |
Verdicts
Permit MCP Gateway
No SDK or client change, since the client points at the gateway URL and keeps its tool list. Approvals are Enterprise only, through a demo, with no published price.
Temporal
Waits of any length with a timeout survive worker restarts and deploys. No reviewer inbox, notifications or routing, so the human side is all your code.
Before you call either
Permit MCP Gateway
- Expect a waiting message before an approval-gated tool returns, and don't retry the call while it waits
- Read the rejection reason in the error and change approach instead of calling the same tool again
- Treat a timeout as a rejection and ask the user to have an admin online before a batch of destructive calls
- Stay connected while waiting, since dropping the connection cancels the request
- On a 429 with
rate_limited, back off for a few seconds and grow the wait on each retry
Temporal
- Put the decision in a typed Signal payload (approver, decision, comments, timestamp) instead of a bare boolean
- Always wait with a timeout and treat the timeout path as a rejection or an escalation on purpose
- Use the workflow ID as the approval ID, so the reviewer's tool only needs one value to send the Signal
- Use an Update instead of a Signal when the approver's tool needs an acknowledgement back
- Expect
ResourceExhaustedunder load and let the SDK retry it, since signals are throttled last