Glama vs Smithery
A side-by-side comparison of Glama and Smithery, two MCP tools, drawn from Ignaite's continuously-verified listings.
Compared from listings verified as of
At a glance
| Attribute | Glama | Smithery |
|---|---|---|
| Category | MCP | MCP |
| Pricing | FREEMIUM | FREEMIUM |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Deployment | Cloud | Cloud |
| Platforms (differs) | Web, API | Web, CLI, API |
| Model support | Model-agnostic | Model-agnostic |
| Vendor (differs) | Glama | Smithery |
| Capabilities (differs) |
|
|
The honest brief
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
Smithery
Largest MCP registry (6,000+ servers) with managed OAuth and hosting, so agents get authenticated tool access without config wrangling.
- Browse and install community servers
- CLI installs without editing JSON
- Persistent authenticated connections
- Deploy your own servers
- Only the CLI is open-source (AGPL)
- Registry/hosting is a closed platform
- Quality of community servers varies
When to pick which
Both cover MCP gateway / registry.
Pick Smithery if you need App / agent deployment.
- App / agent deployment (primary capability)
They also differ on:
- Platforms
- Web, API · Web, CLI, API