AgentPatch vs Arcade: Two Approaches to Agent Tooling

AI agents need tools. That much is settled. The open question is how those tools get their permissions. Does the agent act on its own, using its own credentials? Or does it act on behalf of a specific human user, borrowing their access?

This is the core difference between marketplace-style tool platforms and auth delegation platforms. Both are valid. They solve different problems. Picking the wrong one for your use case means fighting the architecture instead of building your product.

Here is how the two approaches compare, using Arcade and AgentPatch as concrete examples.

Arcade: Auth Delegation for Agents

Arcade was built by members of Okta’s former developer platform team. That lineage shows up in the product. Arcade’s central feature is authenticated actions: an agent can act on behalf of a specific user, using that user’s OAuth tokens.

The typical Arcade flow looks like this. A user connects their Google account to your app via Arcade’s OAuth flow. Your agent then calls Arcade to send an email as that user, create a calendar event in their account, or read their Drive files. Arcade manages token storage, refresh, scoping, and consent. The agent never touches raw credentials.

Arcade also hosts community MCP servers and provides a toolkit for building custom actions. But the core value proposition is the auth layer. If your agent needs to say “do X as User #4821,” Arcade handles the plumbing.

Strengths: Deep OAuth support. Per-user token management. Consent flows built in. Good fit for multi-tenant SaaS products where agents operate on behalf of end users.

Tradeoffs: Setup requires OAuth configuration per integration. Your users must go through an auth flow before the agent can act for them. Pricing is subscription-based with usage tiers.

AgentPatch: A Tool Marketplace

AgentPatch takes a different approach. The agent gets its own capabilities. You create an API key, load credits, and your agent can call any tool in the catalog. Google Search, Bing, email, image generation, maps, YouTube transcripts, stock data, and more.

There is no per-user OAuth. The agent does not impersonate anyone. It searches Google using AgentPatch’s upstream API access. It sends email from an AgentPatch-managed address (or your configured domain). It generates images through AgentPatch’s provider accounts.

Setup is one command for MCP-compatible agents:

claude mcp add agentpatch -- npx -y agentpatch-mcp@latest

Or a single HTTP call for any other framework. One API key covers everything.

Strengths: Fast setup. No OAuth flows. No per-user auth management. Pay-per-use pricing (1 credit = $0.0001). 50+ tools through one endpoint. Works with any agent framework.

Tradeoffs: The agent acts as itself, not as a specific user. You cannot send email from a user’s personal Gmail or access their private Google Drive.

The Key Difference

Arcade answers: “How does my agent act as my user?”

AgentPatch answers: “How does my agent get its own tools?”

These are different questions. The distinction matters most when you consider the permission model.

With Arcade, the agent’s capabilities come from the user. If the user revokes access, the agent loses that capability. The agent can only do what the user has authorized. This is the right model when the agent is a proxy for human action, like an assistant that manages someone’s calendar or files.

With AgentPatch, the agent’s capabilities come from the developer. The agent can search the web, generate images, and send notifications regardless of which end user triggered the task. This is the right model when the agent needs general-purpose tools that do not require access to a specific person’s accounts.

How to Choose

Use Arcade when:

  • Your agent must act on behalf of individual users
  • You need OAuth delegation (Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, GitHub)
  • You are building a multi-tenant product where each user connects their own accounts
  • Compliance requires per-user consent flows

Use AgentPatch when:

  • Your agent needs its own general-purpose capabilities
  • You want broad tool access (search, email, maps, images) without per-user auth
  • You are building a developer tool, research agent, or automation pipeline
  • You want pay-per-use pricing instead of subscription tiers

Use both when:

  • Your agent needs general tools (web search, image gen) plus user-specific actions (send from their Gmail). Use AgentPatch for the commodity tools and Arcade for the auth-delegated actions.

Wrapping Up

Arcade and AgentPatch are not competitors in the way that two search engines compete. They occupy different layers of the agent tooling stack. Arcade is an auth platform that happens to provide tools. AgentPatch is a tool marketplace that happens to skip auth.

Pick based on what your agent needs to do. If it needs to be someone, use Arcade. If it needs to do something, use AgentPatch. Many production agents will need both.

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