Difference between
Obot and Runlayer
Compare Obot and Runlayer to find the right enterprise MCP platform. Explore governance, security, hosting, model access, and open-source flexibility.
What is Obot?
Obot is an open-source, enterprise-grade AI control plane. It gives organizations a single point of control over their MCP servers, model and LLM access, Skills, users, access policies, and auditing from a single control pane. Obot provides a built-in LLM Gateway that extends the same governance to external coding agents like Claude Code and Codex, so model access is managed under the same policies as MCP traffic, not as a separate concern. Obot runs entirely on infrastructure you control and can be deployed from a single Docker container up to a full Kubernetes/Helm deployment, with enterprise capabilities unlocked by a license key on the same open-source build rather than a separate product tier.
What is Runlayer?
Runlayer is an enterprise AI enablement and control platform, not just an MCP gateway. It gives every employee a governed "golden path" to delegate work to AI agents across the 5–20 AI clients a typical enterprise uses — IDEs, chat clients, vertical AI apps, and platforms like Salesforce Agentforce — while giving IT and security teams identity, permissions, policy enforcement, audit logs, and cost control in one interoperability layer. Its MCP Gateway connects clients to a catalog of 18,000+ MCP servers with role-based access and runtime scanning, and its Watch product finds shadow AI activity across employee devices. Runlayer is closed-source and offered primarily as a managed cloud service, with self-hosted deployment behind a customer's VPC available for enterprise customers.
SIDE BY SIDE
Feature Comparison
Deployment & Licensing
| FEATURE | OBOT | RUNLAYER |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted deployment |
Yes
|
Yes
– in-VPC or managed cloud |
| Open-Source |
Yes
|
No
– closed-source |
| Simple Free-to-Enterprise Pathway |
Yes
– single build, license-key to upgrade |
No
– enterprise sales-led, no free tier |
MCP Server Management
| FEATURE | OBOT | RUNLAYER |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-Built Server Directory |
Curated catalog |
18,000+ servers, scanned before approval |
| Multi-server Aggregation |
vMCPs |
MCP Gateway + virtual MCP servers |
| Configuration as Code (GitOps) |
Yes
|
No
– public GitOps workflow documented |
| Internal MCP Packaging |
Yes
|
Yes
– package internal APIs as MCPs/skills |
Authentication & Access
| FEATURE | OBOT | RUNLAYER |
|---|---|---|
| Basic Tier SSO included |
Local, GitHub & Google |
No
– SSO/SAML via WorkOS is enterprise-only |
| Enterprise IdP Support |
Entra, Okta, JumpCloud & Auth0 – free Community registration or Enterprise license |
Okta, Entra, Google Workspace via WorkOS (SSO/SAML, OIDC, SCIM 2.0) |
| Role-Based Access Control |
Yes
|
Yes
– identity-aware, IdP-synced permissions |
| Unified API token model |
Yes
– single token model |
OBO token exchange per agent session |
Guardrails & Inspections
| FEATURE | OBOT | RUNLAYER |
|---|---|---|
| Tool Filtering |
Webhook filters |
ToolGuard security models |
| Network Egress Control |
Yes
|
No
dedicated egress control documented |
| Shadow AI Detection |
Yes
– obot scan on user machine |
Yes
– Watch, deployed via MDM (Jamf, Intune, Kandji) |
| Agent Trajectory Monitoring |
No
|
Yes
– AgentGuard, patented semantic alignment detection |
Models, Agents & Skills
| FEATURE | OBOT | RUNLAYER |
|---|---|---|
| Model Gateway |
Yes
– LLM Gateway for Anthropic/OpenAI |
Early access – LLM Gateway, self-hosted only |
| Multi-Client Coverage |
MCP clients + LLM Gateway for coding agents |
Yes
– 5–20 client types incl. IDEs, chat, Agentforce |
| Agent Builder |
Obot Chat |
Yes
– no-code agent builder, scoped permissions |
| Skills catalog |
Yes
|
Yes
– Markdown Skills, plugin bundles |
Insights & Audit
| FEATURE | OBOT | RUNLAYER |
|---|---|---|
| Audit Logs |
Yes
|
Yes
|
| Exportable Metrics & Reports |
Yes
|
Yes
– adoption, cost, and usage analytics |
| Compliance Certification |
SOC 2 Type II in progress – controls in independent observation period; MIT licensed |
AARM Extended Conformance (R1–R9) |
Which solution works for me?
Runlayer offers a strong solution for security teams focused on MCP-specific threat detection and shadow AI discovery across employee devices, backed by a large pre-vetted server catalog and deep identity provider integration through WorkOS. It is better suited for organizations that want a managed, security-first MCP gateway where model governance is a secondary need.
For teams that want to own and build the governance they need across their infrastructure end-to-end, Obot provides a single self-hosted control plane covering MCP hosting, model access through its LLM Gateway, agent and skill management, and user and compliance controls — all on one open-source build that upgrades to Enterprise with a license key.
