Agentic Index
Arcade vs Paragon (2026)
Both solve the problem of letting an agent act inside somebody else's software, and they solve different amounts of it. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Arcade is the focused authentication layer: OAuth and token management across more than seven thousand integrations, with an MCP runtime, from 25 dollars a month with a free tier. Paragon is the wider platform, a thousand plus prebuilt actions across a hundred and thirty plus apps behind one API or MCP server, plus triggers, RAG sync and workflows, and it documents 11.5 of 14 against Arcade's 8. Arcade if authenticated tool calling is the gap; Paragon if you also need the data flowing back.
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Arcade and Paragon are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 969 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Arcade if
- Auth is the actual problem: you have tools and agents, and token handling is what keeps breaking.
- Integration count is what matters and seven thousand beats a curated hundred and thirty.
- Self serve pricing from 25 dollars a month with a free tier fits how you want to start.
Choose Paragon if
- You need more than calling out: triggers, RAG sync and workflow orchestration are part of the requirement.
- Knowledge grounding matters and Arcade documents none of it.
- You are embedding integrations into a product you ship to customers, which is what Paragon is built for.
| At a glance | Arcade | Paragon |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Agent infrastructure | Agent infrastructure |
| Entry price | From $25/mo · free tier | Tiered pricing with a developer tier for building; production and enterprise pricing quoted through sales |
| Free / trial | Free tier: 100 user challenges, 1,000 standard tool executions, 50 pro tool executions per month, unlimited tools | Free developer tier for building and testing; paid tiers via sales |
| Pricing confidence | public exact | public partial |
| Feature | A Arcade |
P Paragon |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
|
Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
| Knowledge & context | ||
|
Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
No / Not documented | Full / Explicit |
|
Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
No / Not documented | Partial |
| Control & trust | ||
|
Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
Partial | Partial |
|
Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Solution readiness | ||
|
Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
| Platform extensibility | ||
|
Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
Partial | Full / Explicit |
|
APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
Full / Explicit | Full / Explicit |
|
Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
Partial | Partial |
| Specialist automation | ||
|
Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
No / Not documented | No / Not documented |
Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | A Arcade |
P Paragon |
|---|---|---|
|
Entry price Lowest public entry point |
From $25/mo · free tier | Tiered pricing with a developer tier for building; production and enterprise pricing quoted through sales |
|
Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, exact | Public, partial |
|
Billing Primary billing axis |
Platform fee plus usage (user challenges and tool executions) | platform tier and connected active users or integrations |
|
Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Medium variable cost |
|
Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
|
Free tierTrial
|
|
Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Mixed |
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