Agentic Index
Asteroid vs Island (2026)
Both vendors last verified
Both put governance around browser agents in serious environments. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Island is the enterprise browser as a control plane, running on demand agents under governance, with per agent permissions, human approval gates, real time data loss prevention on MCP data flows, per invocation audit logs to your security systems and model agnostic provider choice. Asteroid supervises browser and computer use in regulated back offices, where a frontier model drives the portal, the agent then compiles its own deterministic script and can discover the private API underneath, graph based and self healing, HIPAA ready with live human supervision. Island governs everything. Asteroid turns the exploration into something repeatable.
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Asteroid and Island 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 1,084 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Asteroid if
- Compiling exploration into a deterministic script is the reliability mechanism you want.
- Discovering the private API underneath is a genuinely different and more durable outcome.
- Live human supervision on regulated back office work is your operating model.
Choose Island if
- The enterprise browser already governs your people's browsing, and agents join the same controls.
- Data loss prevention on MCP flows and per invocation audit logs are security requirements.
- Model agnostic provider choice at the browser layer keeps your options open.
| Feature | A Asteroid |
I Island |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
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Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
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AsteroidIntegrations & Tool Calling Agents act in EHRs, payer portals and desktop apps with credentials held in an organization vault, reach systems through VPNs, call APIs such as SAM.gov directly, and write results back to EHRs and CRMs; each agent profile owns an inbox for login codes and mail. Sourceasteroid.ai/llms.txtread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandIntegrations & Tool Calling AI agents take governed actions through Island hosted MCP servers, connect to approved knowledge sources through MCP integrations, and organizations can publish internal MCP servers to agents without exposing API keys or network access. Sourceisland.io/ai/ai-browserread 2026-09-27 |
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Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
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AsteroidWorkflow Orchestration Workflows are graphs of agent nodes and transitions with failure paths, loop backs, handoffs, per node Playwright scripts and batch executions, built in the platform or by Astro from a described process. Sourcedocs.asteroid.ai/llms.txtread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandWorkflow Orchestration AI Automation builds and runs on-demand agents that work across enterprise applications, and the Enterprise Browser automates common workflows inside web apps without source code. There is no multi agent execution, workflow model or visual builder. Sourceisland.io/press/island-makes-ai-work-for-the-enterpriseread 2026-09-27 |
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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. |
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AsteroidTriggers & Channel Coverage Workflows run on a repeating cron schedule or a single booked time, start from the API, MCP and Slack, and push execution events to webhooks and Slack with signed payloads; pended prior authorizations are re-checked on schedule. Sourcedocs.asteroid.ai/operate/schedulesread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandTriggers & Channel Coverage AI Automation agents are on-demand, and the AI Browser suggests actions from the page the user is viewing. Both start when a person asks, and there is no schedule, event or webhook trigger. Sourceisland.io/press/island-makes-ai-work-for-the-enterpriseread 2026-09-27 |
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| Knowledge & context | ||
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Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
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AsteroidKnowledge Grounding & RAG Prior authorization workflows answer payer clinical questionnaires strictly from the chart material and documentation supplied for each case, and workflows read attached files. That context is assembled for each run, and Asteroid keeps no standing index over the customer's knowledge. Sourceasteroid.ai/llms.txtread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandKnowledge Grounding & RAG AI reaches company approved knowledge sources through RAG and MCP integrations, and prompts are enriched with identity, role and page context. Island routes to the customer's existing sources and keeps no index of its own over the customer's knowledge. Sourceisland.io/ai/ai-browserread 2026-09-27 |
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Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
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AsteroidMemory & State Persistence An agent's own files include memory kept beside its nodes in the workflow file tree, and the workspace folder carries state across steps and loop backs inside one run only. Asteroid does not say how agent memory is scoped or how long it lasts. Agent profiles carry browser state, not memory. Sourcedocs.asteroid.ai/llms.txtread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandMemory & State Persistence Admins decide what AI remembers, including which context carries forward, which conversations persist and how that builds over time. This is memory under policy, with no stated scope or lifetime for what is kept. Sourceisland.io/ai/ai-browserread 2026-09-27 |
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| Control & trust | ||
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Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
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AsteroidHuman Oversight & Guardrails Operators watch agents live, pause them and require approval before sensitive steps; workflows carry clinician in the loop checkpoints, a human checkpoint before enrollment submission and a person approving every binder payment, and nodes can ask the user a question. Sourceasteroid.ai/securityread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandHuman Oversight & Guardrails Admins define for every AI agent what it can access, what it can execute and when human approval is required, and AI Automation agents run under set controls over application access, permitted actions and human approvals. Sourceisland.io/ai/ai-browserread 2026-09-27 |
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Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
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AsteroidSecurity, Identity & Governance Customers manage role based access control and least privilege with granular permissions, and portal credentials are encrypted, revocable and scoped per agent. Asteroid holds SOC 2, with the report in the Trust Center, alongside HIPAA with BAAs and third party penetration testing. Its security page calls the SOC 2 report Type II, while its llms.txt summary says Type I. Sourceasteroid.ai/securityread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandSecurity, Identity & Governance Admins define which AI tools, models and tenants each employee can access by identity, role and location, set per agent permissions and issue just in time, time boxed credentials to agents. Island completed a SOC 2 Type 2 audit by PwC of the Enterprise Browser and Island Cloud (announced 6 Jul 2022). That audit dates from 2022, and Island runs a trust center. Sourceisland.io/ai/ai-browserread 2026-09-27 |
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Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
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AsteroidObservability & Auditability Every action an agent takes is recorded and replayable, with screen recordings, a step by step timeline, the page seen at each step and the reasoning behind each action and transition, plus an activity log with node durations. Sourcedocs.asteroid.ai/build/test-and-publishread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandObservability & Auditability Island captures detailed logs of every AI conversation, prompt, response, tool call and agent action across web and desktop, tied to user, device, agent and policy and exportable, and AI Automation agents run with full audit trails. The same logging covers Island's own agents as well as the third party AI it governs. Sourceisland.io/airead 2026-09-27 |
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Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
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AsteroidDeployment & Data Residency Data is hosted in the United States on Asteroid's cloud, the only region offered, and there is no VPC, on premise or self hosted option. The Browser, Linux and Windows sandboxes and VPN access into customer networks are where agents run and how they connect, and none of them places the platform in the customer's own infrastructure. Sourceasteroid.ai/securityread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandDeployment & Data Residency Agent actions run either through Island hosted MCP servers or locally in the managed browser on the customer's devices, and Island ships as a browser, extension, desktop and network layer. Island Cloud offers no data residency or region choice. Sourceisland.io/ai/ai-browserread 2026-09-27 |
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| Solution readiness | ||
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Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
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AsteroidPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs A Workflow Library offers pre built workflow templates across ten categories, mirrored in the docs catalog, such as OIG Exclusion Check, DEA Registration Verification, Eligibility and Benefits Check, Drug Prior Authorization on ePA Portals and Medicare Commission Reconciliation. Each template handles one job. Sourceasteroid.ai/workflow-libraryread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs There is no catalog of prebuilt agents, workflow library or templates. The customer builds AI Automation agents and browser automations. Sourceisland.io/airead 2026-09-27 |
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| Platform extensibility | ||
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Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
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AsteroidModel Flexibility & Routing Each node picks a model from Asteroid's own tiers, asteroid-fast, asteroid-balanced and asteroid-max. The changelog names Anthropic, OpenAI and Google models behind prompt tuning and a provider grouped picker, but customers get no list of providers to choose from, so Asteroid decides which providers serve each tier. Sourcedocs.asteroid.ai/llms-full.txtread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandModel Flexibility & Routing Island is model agnostic. Organizations embed the providers they choose, including ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Grok, Claude or their own, and admins define which models each employee can access. Sourceisland.io/ai/ai-browserread 2026-09-27 |
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APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
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AsteroidAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility A REST API and SDK deploy, execute and manage agents, with a workflow file representation for version control, and an MCP server at mcp.asteroid.ai builds, executes and debugs agents from a coding assistant. Sourcedocs.asteroid.ai/llms.txtread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Island names a Browser-use MCP that lets outside agents drive the Island browser and a Direct API for building governance into coded agents, but publishes no public endpoint, auth scheme, tool list or API reference. Sourceisland.io/airead 2026-09-27 |
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Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
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AsteroidTesting, Debugging & Optimization Changes run as a draft version before publishing, with version compare and a warning before schema breaking publishes. Astro reads past executions' timelines to name slow or failing nodes and writes improvements back to a draft, so the deployed agent's behavior feeds its next version. Sourcedocs.asteroid.ai/operate/improveread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandTesting, Debugging & Optimization Tracking covers AI usage, cost, time saved and tool performance, which is adoption analytics. There is no evaluation harness, test cases or quality gate for agents. Sourceisland.io/airead 2026-09-27 |
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| Specialist automation | ||
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Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
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AsteroidBrowser & Computer Use Agent nodes with browser_use and computer_use capabilities read the screen and act in payer portals, EHRs and desktop apps inside Browser, Linux or Windows sandboxes the vendor runs, with Playwright scripts replaying proven paths. Sourcedocs.asteroid.ai/concepts/environmentsread 2026-09-27 |
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IslandBrowser & Computer Use Island's own Enterprise Browser is where agents act. AI Browser agents take governed actions locally in the browser, AI Automation agents execute inside a hardened browser environment, and a Browser-use MCP lets agents navigate legacy internal apps that have no API. Sourceisland.io/airead 2026-09-27 |
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Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | A Asteroid |
I Island |
|---|---|---|
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Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Individual is free to start, with pay as you go credit top ups. Startup is $300 a month ($330 of credits) and Scale $1,000 a month ($1,150 of credits). Enterprise is custom. | Contact sales |
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Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, exact | Contact only |
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Billing Primary billing axis |
Credits that cover runtime, LLM usage and proxies, bought through pay as you go top ups on the free Individual plan or through a monthly plan that includes more credits than its fee. | enterprise contract |
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Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Low variable cost | Medium variable cost |
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Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tierTrial
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No free tier
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Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Self-serve | Sales call |
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Pricing verified When this pricing was last checked |
Product updates
Newest first, each linked to its source.
Asteroid
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· Security / enterprise
Asteroid merged its Vault and Agent Profiles into one Logins page that holds every account its browser agents sign in as, including groups of interchangeable logins for the same portal.
Source
Island
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· Browser/computer use
Enterprise Browser for Agents lets endpoint and cloud agents work in SaaS, internal and public web apps through Island's browser, with the organization's policies applied.
Source -
· Integrations
Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Claude for Microsoft 365 and Claude Science sessions now flow into Island's Anthropic integration through the expanded Claude Compliance API.
Source -
· Integrations
Island integrated its Enterprise Agentic Control Plane with Anthropic's new Inference Hooks for Claude Enterprise.
Source
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