Arcade vs Glama
A side-by-side comparison of Arcade and Glama, two MCP tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | Arcade | Glama |
|---|---|---|
| Category | MCP | MCP |
| Pricing | FREEMIUM | FREEMIUM |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud |
| Platforms (differs) | API | Web, API |
| Model support | Model-agnostic | Model-agnostic |
| Vendor (differs) | Arcade | Glama |
| 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
Glama
Superset of the official MCP registry that scores servers and lets you test any of them in an ephemeral browser sandbox.
- Indexes 10000+ MCP servers, security-scored
- In-browser Inspector for live tool calls
- Gateway adds auth, logs, access control
- Hosting for private/public servers
- Hosting and Gateway features are paid
- Quality varies across indexed servers
- Cloud-centric, not a local tool
When to pick which
Glama leans on MCP gateway / registry as a headline capability; Arcade treats it as secondary.
- MCP gateway / registry (primary capability)
They also differ on:
- Platforms
- API · Web, API
Their capability lists differ in recorded depth — compare the full lists above before deciding.