--- title: "MCP head-to-heads: hosts, registries, standards | Agent MCP Directory" description: "23 head-to-heads on the act layer: MCP hosts, registries, gateways and the standards agents use, each with a sourced difference." canonical: https://agentmcpdirectory.com/compare site: "Agent MCP Directory" last_updated: 2026-11-04 section: "Head-to-heads" --- # MCP head-to-heads: hosts, registries, standards | Agent MCP Directory > 23 head-to-heads on the act layer: MCP hosts, registries, gateways and the standards agents use, each with a sourced difference. Source: https://agentmcpdirectory.com/compare Site: Agent MCP Directory Last reviewed: 2026-11-04 # Head-to-heads 23 pairings: 16 between hosts, registries and gateways and 7 between standards and agent surfaces. Each page states one sourced difference and gives a verdict for the product engineer, the platform lead and the agent builder. Read on 4 November 2026. ## Hosts, registries and gateways | Pair | The difference | | --- | --- | | Cloudflare vs Vercel | Cloudflare ships its own OAuth authorization server library (Workers OAuth Provider v1, DCR and CIMD) and a portal product that fronts up to 80 servers; Vercel's mcp-handler verifies tokens and serves resource metadata but does not issue tokens, so you bring the authorization server. | | Smithery vs Glama | Smithery shut down its MCP Proxy and managed identity on 31 Oct 2026 after joining Arcade, and its listing URLs return 404; Glama still lists 115,804 servers and 40,288 remote connectors with grades, but its API needs a key and attribution. | | Composio vs Zapier MCP | Composio generates per-user MCP URLs, restricts tools with allowed_tools and bills per call (0.0003 USD on Pro); Zapier MCP serves one endpoint at mcp.zapier.com over 9,000+ apps and bills two plan tasks per successful call. | | Official MCP Registry vs GitHub MCP Registry | The official registry holds 56,677 latest entries published by anyone who proves a namespace; GitHub's registry lists 773 servers, 587 with a remote, with GitHub metadata such as stars and licence. | | Official MCP Registry vs Claude Connectors Directory | The official registry accepts any verified namespace with no review; the Claude Connectors Directory requires remote HTTPS, OAuth 2.0 for user data and readOnlyHint or destructiveHint on every tool, then scans and may review. | | GitHub MCP Registry vs Claude Connectors Directory | GitHub lists 773 servers with install buttons for developer tools; Anthropic lists 1,064 connectors that run inside Claude, with a portal submission and automated scan. | | Cloudflare vs Composio | Cloudflare hosts code you write and lets you run your own OAuth server; Composio hosts the tools and holds the app OAuth for toolkits it supports, generating a Connect Link per user. | | Vercel vs Mintlify MCP | Vercel runs whatever MCP server you write; Mintlify generates a docs search server automatically at /mcp with fixed tools and published rate limits. | | Apify MCP vs Browserbase MCP | Apify exposes thousands of Store Actors as tools and supports OAuth; Browserbase exposes six browser tools (navigate, act, observe, extract, start, end) with the API key in the URL. | | Cloudflare AI Gateway vs Vercel AI Gateway | Cloudflare charges a 5 percent fee on Unified Billing credits and gives caching free; Vercel charges no token markup and bills add-ons such as team-wide ZDR at 0.10 USD per 1,000 requests. | | Portkey vs Kong AI Gateway | Portkey's MCP Gateway provisions tools per user and logs each call with parameters; Kong turns existing APIs into MCP tools and applies OAuth2 strategies, with OpenTelemetry across AI, MCP and A2A. | | Portkey vs Cloudflare AI Gateway | Portkey fronts MCP servers through its MCP Gateway with credential injection; Cloudflare AI Gateway fronts model APIs while MCP servers go through MCP server portals. | | Zapier MCP vs Apify MCP | Zapier covers SaaS actions across 9,000+ apps with Zapier holding credentials; Apify covers web data through Actors and can take per-request payments via Skyfire on pay-per-event Actors. | | Smithery vs Official MCP Registry | Smithery published 213 hosted servers into the official registry under ai.smithery, all pointing at server.smithery.ai; the registry itself does not host or proxy anything. | | Glama vs Official MCP Registry | Glama grades servers A to F for licence, quality and maintenance; the official registry records only active or deprecated status. | | Composio vs Portkey | Composio both hosts tools and holds app credentials; Portkey sits in front of servers you or others host and injects credentials per server. | ## Standards and surfaces | Pair | The difference | | --- | --- | | MCP vs A2A | MCP connects an agent to tools, resources and prompts on a server; A2A connects agents to other agents through an Agent Card at /.well-known/agent-card.json and task messages over JSON-RPC, gRPC or HTTP+JSON. | | MCP vs WebMCP | MCP runs over stdio or Streamable HTTP to a server; WebMCP registers tools inside a web page through document.modelContext, so only an agent running in the browser can call them. | | WebMCP vs agents.json | WebMCP exposes JavaScript tools in the page at run time; agents.json is a static OpenAPI-based file at /.well-known/agents.json describing API flows. | | NLWeb vs MCP | NLWeb gives a site a natural-language ask method returning Schema.org JSON, and every NLWeb instance is also an MCP server; MCP alone defines no ask method or content vocabulary. | | Agent Skills vs MCP | Agent Skills are SKILL.md instructions loaded by progressive disclosure; MCP servers expose callable tools. Vendors such as Stripe ship both and configure them together. | | CLIs vs MCP | A CLI runs in the agent's terminal; an MCP server runs remotely with OAuth. Stripe, Vercel and Neon now use their CLIs to configure their MCP servers. | | OpenAPI vs MCP | OpenAPI describes endpoints for code generation; MCP serves tool descriptions written for models and handles auth discovery through RFC 9728 metadata. | Edition 4 November 2026 Method [How rows are verified](https://agentmcpdirectory.com/method/) Data [CSV and JSON](https://agentmcpdirectory.com/data/) Markdown [This page as markdown](https://agentmcpdirectory.com/compare/index.md) ## Sources - [Cloudflare changelog: Workers OAuth Provider v1 (1 Oct 2026)](https://developers.cloudflare.com/changelog/post/2026-10-01-workers-oauth-provider-1x/), read 4 November 2026 - [smithery.ai home page](https://smithery.ai/), read 4 November 2026 - [Composio pricing](https://composio.dev/pricing), read 4 November 2026 - [Official MCP Registry API, GET /v0/servers](https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers), read 4 November 2026 - [Claude: submit a connector to the directory](https://claude.com/docs/connectors/building/submission), read 4 November 2026 - [Claude connectors directory](https://claude.com/connectors), read 4 November 2026 - [Composio MCP quickstart](https://docs.composio.dev/docs/mcp-quickstart), read 4 November 2026 - [Mintlify: Model Context Protocol](https://www.mintlify.com/docs/ai/model-context-protocol), read 4 November 2026 - [Browserbase MCP setup](https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/mcp/setup), read 4 November 2026 - [Vercel AI Gateway pricing](https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/pricing), read 4 November 2026 - [Portkey MCP Gateway docs](https://portkey.ai/docs/product/mcp-gateway), read 4 November 2026 - [Cloudflare MCP server portals docs](https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/access-controls/ai-controls/mcp-portals/), read 4 November 2026 - [Apify MCP server docs](https://docs.apify.com/platform/integrations/mcp), read 4 November 2026 - [registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers](https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0/servers?search=ai.smithery), read 4 November 2026 - [Glama MCP servers directory](https://glama.ai/mcp/servers), read 4 November 2026 - [A2A specification](https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/specification/), read 4 November 2026 - [webmachinelearning/webmcp](https://github.com/webmachinelearning/webmcp), read 4 November 2026 - [wild-card-ai/agents-json](https://github.com/wild-card-ai/agents-json), read 4 November 2026 - [nlweb-ai/NLWeb](https://github.com/nlweb-ai/NLWeb), read 4 November 2026 - [Stripe MCP docs](https://docs.stripe.com/mcp), read 4 November 2026 - [Neon MCP server docs](https://neon.com/docs/ai/neon-mcp-server), read 4 November 2026 - [MCP authorization, 2026-07-28](https://modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/2026-07-28/basic/authorization), read 4 November 2026 Last reviewed 4 November 2026