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Arcade.dev vs Runlayer

Agent identity & tool auth vs. Enterprise MCP gateway — compared on 12 governance & compliance criteria for enterprises putting AI agents into production.

Strong / documented Partial / indirect Absent / not publicly documented

Arcade.dev

Agent identity & tool-calling runtime

Arcade.dev is an agent authorization and tool-calling runtime — "SSO for AI agents." Built by ex-Okta/Auth0 engineers, it lets agents act as the real user via OAuth, brokering tokens and secrets so tool calls run with the right identity and scopes, and enforcing per-action authorization at runtime.

Runlayer

Enterprise MCP gateway

Runlayer is an enterprise MCP gateway that routes every MCP request through a governed proxy — deterministic access policy (PBAC), agent identity and token brokering, shadow-MCP discovery (Watch), and an ML-based threat scanner (Guard). MCP is its entire center of gravity.

How they compare

Twelve criteria that decide whether an enterprise can prove — not just hope — that its AI agents stay inside policy.

Criterion Arcade Runlayer
Deterministic, rule-based authorization
Pre-execution enforcement
Segregation of Duties enforcement
Excessive-agency prevention / least privilege
Design-time action-surface mapping
Compliance-classified tools catalog
Full lifecycle coverage (design-time + runtime)
Named-approver human-in-the-loop routing
SOX / GDPR / financial-GRC control mapping & evidence
AI-specific standards (ISO 42001, EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, OWASP LLM)
Immutable / tamper-evident audit ledger
GRC / internal-audit / IT-governance buyer fit

Where Arcade.dev is strong

  • OAuth token brokering and agent identity — its crown jewel, built by ex-Okta/Auth0 engineers
  • Deterministic, scope-based authorization checks on each tool call
  • Broad MCP runtime — 7,500+ tools across 81 servers, with an open-source SDK
  • Pre/post-execution hooks that can inspect and block requests inline

Where Runlayer is strong

  • Deep MCP focus — an 18,000+ server catalog across 300+ AI clients
  • Deterministic PBAC access control with least-privilege intersection of agent/user/server policies
  • Shadow-MCP discovery (Watch) and agent identity, including a 1Password partnership
  • SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR, with tier-1 backing and MCP-protocol credibility

What both leave to you: governance

Arcade.dev and Runlayer secure how agents operate — but neither enforces Segregation of Duties, maps an agent's action surface at design time, or produces SOX/GDPR-grade compliance evidence. That is the layer LangGuard adds.

  • Deterministic, rule-based authorization on every action — reproducible and auditable, not probabilistic
  • Segregation-of-Duties enforcement built in — the only vendor in this set to ship it
  • Design-time action-surface mapping plus a compliance-classified tools catalog (SoD, SOX, GDPR, ISO 42001)
  • Named-approver human-in-the-loop routing and an immutable, tamper-evident audit ledger
  • Built for GRC, internal audit and IT governance — with SOX/GDPR control evidence

The bottom line

Arcade.dev and Runlayer are both strong runtime security tools. If your requirement is deterministic authorization, Segregation of Duties, design-time action-surface mapping, and audit-grade compliance evidence, LangGuard governs what agents are allowed to do — before they do it — and works alongside either.

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