We rated 6 auth providers on how well they work for AI agents. The results will surprise you. **Here are the rankings:** 1. WorkOS — 83/100 2. Clerk — 80/100 3. Stytch — 68/100 4. Okta — 65/100 5. Auth0 — 62/100 Notice something? The enterprise giants (Okta, Auth0) are at the bottom. --- **Why Auth0 scores 62/100 — only 3 points above Zapier** Zapier is the worst tool we've rated: 35/100. Auth0 comes in at 62. That gap feels small when you understand what's happening. Auth0's pricing model score: **35/100.** Here's the problem: Machine-to-machine (M2M) tokens — the ones your AI agent uses to authenticate — count against your free tier limit of 1,000/month. If your agent makes 50 API calls per session and runs 100 times, you've burned 5,000 tokens. You're on a paid plan before your product ships. M2M tokens aren't free. They're your agent's lifeblood. Auth0 treats them as billable events. --- **Why Okta scores 65/100 despite 90/100 reliability** Okta's infrastructure is rock-solid (90/100 reliability). But account creation score: **60/100.** To get a free developer org at developer.okta.com, you fill out a form, wait for email verification, and sometimes hit manual review. For an AI agent trying to spin up a test environment autonomously, that's a hard stop. Compare this to WorkOS, where you can create an API key and start testing SSO flows in sandbox mode without ever talking to a human. --- **Why WorkOS wins at 83/100** WorkOS wasn't built for enterprise sales cycles — it was built for developers who need to ship auth fast. That shows in the numbers: - **Discovery (88/100)**: Clean docs, clear API reference, no friction finding what you need - **Account creation (80/100)**: Sandbox mode for SSO testing without enterprise contracts - **Agent tooling (87/100)**: API-first, comprehensive REST endpoints for user/org management - **Free tier**: 1 million MAU — unusually generous. Most competitors cap at 10K or less. The gap between WorkOS (83) and Okta (65) is 18 points. That's not a rounding error — it's a fundamentally different philosophy about who the customer is. --- **The biggest gap in auth for agents: no MCP servers** Zero out of 6 providers have an MCP server. None. This means Claude, Cursor, and Windsurf users can't query their auth provider directly from their AI assistant. No "list all users in org X" or "check if user Y has role Z" via MCP. WorkOS, Clerk, or Stytch could ship an MCP server and immediately differentiate from every competitor. The market is wide open. --- **The full rankings:** | Provider | Score | Account Creation | Pricing Model | Has MCP? | |----------|-------|-----------------|---------------|----------| | WorkOS | 83/100 | 80 | 75 | ✗ | | Clerk | 80/100 | 85 | 80 | ✗ | | Stytch | 68/100 | 78 | 50 | ✗ | | Okta | 65/100 | 60 | 44 | ✗ | | Auth0 | 62/100 | 55 | 35 | ✗ | Full scores at [agentnativeregistry.com](https://agentnativeregistry.com). --- **What to do with this** If you're building an agent that manages user auth: - Use **WorkOS** if you need SSO/enterprise features - Use **Clerk** if you're managing users programmatically (best account_creation score: 85) - Avoid **Auth0** until they fix M2M pricing — it will bite you in production If you're an auth provider reading this: the MCP server opportunity is sitting unclaimed. First one to ship it gets featured in our next newsletter. --- Next issue: Search APIs for AI agents — Exa (88/100) vs Tavily (87/100) vs Perplexity (83/100) vs Algolia (78/100). The scores are close. The differences are not. [View all 100 tools on Agent Native Registry →](https://agentnativeregistry.com) To install our MCP server in Claude: https://agentnativeregistry.com/api/mcp