Arcade Review 2026: Agent Authorization, Tools, and Pricing
A research-based Arcade review covering features, pricing, privacy, limitations, alternatives, and a practical buyer test.
Bottom line
Arcade is an actions runtime for AI agents that manages OAuth, user tokens, tool execution, and policy enforcement across thousands of agent-oriented tools.
Editorial accountability
Who checked this guide
- Evaluation type
- Hands-on evaluation
- Last materially checked
- Evidence
- 4 listed sources
Hands-on testing is identified explicitly. Research-based coverage uses cited product documentation and other named sources; it does not imply every paid plan was used. Read the full methodology.
Editorial freshness
Pricing and material product claims were checked September 10, 2026.
Review evidence
What this guidance is based on
- Review type
- Research-based product assessment
- Material review date
- September 10, 2026
- Evidence
- Current first-party product, pricing, documentation, and policy material
- Buyer test
- Controlled quality, cost, permissions, privacy, reliability, and failure-path evaluation
Important limits
- • DiscoverAI did not complete the proposed long-term paid deployment for this review.
- • Features, prices, limits, security controls, and provider data paths can change; verify the linked first-party pages before purchase.
In this guide
Short answer
Arcade is worth testing when an agent must act in a user's Gmail, Drive, Slack, GitHub, or another authenticated service without turning OAuth and token custody into bespoke application code. Its strongest value is the authorization boundary, not the size of its tool catalog. Teams still need least-privilege scopes, per-action confirmation, idempotency, audit review, and a reliable way to revoke access.
Best for
- Agents acting in user-owned SaaS accounts
- Teams centralizing OAuth and tool governance
- Developers shipping MCP-based actions
Look elsewhere if
- High-risk writes without confirmation
- Workloads that cannot use third-party token custody
- Simple agents with one stable internal API
What Arcade verifiably does
First-party material describes managed OAuth and token storage, runtime authorization, more than 7,500 tools across 81 MCP servers, custom tools and MCP servers, policy enforcement, registries, version control, OpenTelemetry logs, and integrations with common agent frameworks. Enterprise options include VPC and air-gapped deployment, SSO, RBAC, audit logs, and a private registry.
Important limitations
An agent action can send messages, alter records, or expose data even when authentication works perfectly. Broad OAuth scopes, stale consent, prompt injection, repeated retries, and confusing tool descriptions remain application risks. Authentication events and calls are separate meters, while downstream APIs may add quotas and fees. The vendor becomes a sensitive credential and execution dependency.
Arcade pricing
Arcade lists Free at $0 with 2,000 monthly authentication events and 2,000 tool calls. Team costs $25 per month plus $0.10 per authentication event and $0.01 per tool call. Enterprise uses annual bundles and custom deployment, governance, and support terms. Model, target-service, and surrounding infrastructure costs remain separate. Reviewed September 10, 2026.
A fair buyer test
Build 30 read and write tasks across three approved services. Seed expired consent, revoked tokens, duplicate requests, prompt injection, ambiguous identities, rate limits, and a partial outage. Measure correct authorization, scope minimization, confirmation quality, duplicate writes, audit completeness, revocation time, p95 latency, and total cost per accepted action. Require direct verification of every consequential write.
Final verdict
Arcade earns a pilot for teams whose agents have outgrown hand-built OAuth and tool wrappers. Start with reversible actions, narrow scopes, explicit confirmations, short-lived sessions, and audited revocation. Do not mistake a large catalog for permission to expose every tool to every agent.
This is a research-based product assessment, not a claim of hands-on long-term testing. Product, pricing, privacy, security, and usage claims were checked against the first-party sources below on September 10, 2026. Verify current terms and run the proposed test with approved data before adoption.
Reusable trial worksheet
Test Arcade before you commit
Turn this review’s buyer test into evidence. Your entries autosave only in this browser and are never added to shared shortlist links.
Confirm the tool meets every must-have workflow and stakeholder requirement.
Review starting point: Agents acting in user-owned SaaS accounts; Teams centralizing OAuth and tool governance; Developers shipping MCP-based actions
Run the same representative work you would use in production; do not score a polished demo.
Review starting point: Build 30 read and write tasks across three approved services. Seed expired consent, revoked tokens, duplicate requests, prompt injection, ambiguous identities, rate limits, and a partial outage. Measure correct authorization, scope minimization, confirmation quality, duplicate writes, audit completeness, revocation time, p95 latency, and total cost per accepted action. Require direct verification of every consequential write.
Calculate the effective cost per accepted result, including usage, review, corrections, and required add-ons.
Review starting point: Arcade lists Free at $0 with 2,000 monthly authentication events and 2,000 tool calls. Team costs $25 per month plus $0.10 per authentication event and $0.01 per tool call. Enterprise uses annual bundles and custom deployment, governance, and support terms. Model, target-service, and surrounding infrastructure costs remain separate. Reviewed September 10,…
Define an acceptance threshold, test known answers and edge cases, and record every correction.
Review starting point: Editorial quality signals: features 4.3/5; AI quality 4.1/5. Validate these signals in your own work.
Verify what data enters the product, who can access it, how long it is retained, and whether it trains models.
Review starting point: Use approved low-risk data first. Check roles, consent, deletion, subprocessors, model-training settings, and the contract—not only the marketing page.
Test the real handoffs, permissions, failure states, and export path your team depends on.
Review starting point: OpenAI Agents, LangChain, CrewAI, Vercel AI SDK, Mastra, MCP
Record training, governance, reliability, accessibility, ownership, and change-management risks before rollout.
Review starting point: Central credential and action dependency; Two usage meters plus downstream costs; Application-level safety remains the buyer's job
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Community evidence
How verified users put Arcade to work
Structured, editor-moderated experience—not star ratings. This complements our independent review and never changes its score.
No approved community evidence yet. Be the first verified user to contribute.
Sources and verification
Product details and claims were checked against the following primary sources.
Frequently asked questions
What is Arcade for AI agents?
Arcade is an authorization and actions runtime that lets agents connect to user accounts, manage OAuth tokens, execute tools, and apply governance policies.
How much does Arcade cost?
Arcade lists a free tier, Team at $25 per month plus authentication-event and tool-call usage, and custom Enterprise terms.
Does Arcade support MCP?
Yes. Arcade provides hosted MCP servers, supports custom MCP tools, and connects to MCP clients and common agent frameworks.
Does Arcade make agent actions safe automatically?
No. Teams still need narrow scopes, confirmation for consequential writes, prompt-injection defenses, idempotency, monitoring, and revocation tests.
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