Arcade vs FastMCP
A side-by-side comparison of Arcade and FastMCP, two MCP tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | Arcade | FastMCP |
|---|---|---|
| Category | MCP | MCP |
| Pricing | FREEMIUM | FREEMIUM |
| License (differs) | Proprietary | Open core |
| Deployment (differs) | Cloud | — |
| Platforms (differs) | API | API, CLI |
| Model support | Model-agnostic | Model-agnostic |
| Vendor (differs) | Arcade | Prefect |
| Capabilities (differs) |
|
|
The honest brief
Arcade
Auth-first MCP runtime: brokers per-user OAuth so an agent acts as the real end user, not behind one shared token.
- Real actions in Gmail, GitHub, Slack
- Prebuilt agent-optimized tools
- Open framework for custom tools
- Exposed over MCP standard
- Closed/hosted core platform
- Newer entrant in MCP space
- Setup needed per integration
- Free tier limited
FastMCP
v2 is the standalone superset most Python MCP servers build on; v1 was folded into the official MCP Python SDK.
- Decorate a function, get an MCP tool
- Handles transport, auth, lifecycle
- Apache-2.0, free to self-host
- Pythonic, low boilerplate
- Python-only
- Managed hosting is a separate paid product
- MCP spec still evolving
When to pick which
Both cover MCP server and Tool / function calling.
Pick Arcade if you need MCP gateway / registry.
- MCP gateway / registry (secondary capability)
They share capabilities, but each leads with different ones as a headline job:
Arcade is built around Tool / function calling.
- Tool / function calling (primary capability)
FastMCP is built around MCP server.
- MCP server (primary capability)
They also differ on:
- License
- Proprietary · Open core
- Platforms
- API · API, CLI