FastMCP vs Glama
A side-by-side comparison of FastMCP and Glama, two MCP tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | FastMCP | Glama |
|---|---|---|
| Category | MCP | MCP |
| Pricing | FREEMIUM | FREEMIUM |
| License (differs) | Open core | Proprietary |
| Deployment (differs) | — | Cloud |
| Platforms (differs) | API, CLI | Web, API |
| Model support | Model-agnostic | Model-agnostic |
| Vendor (differs) | Prefect | Glama |
| Capabilities (differs) |
|
|
The honest brief
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
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
Pick FastMCP if you need MCP server and Tool / function calling.
- MCP server (primary capability)
- Tool / function calling (secondary capability)
Pick Glama if you need MCP gateway / registry.
- MCP gateway / registry (primary capability)
They also differ on:
- License
- Open core · Proprietary
- Platforms
- API, CLI · Web, API