Toolspoke vs Smithery
Smithery is primarily a discovery registry — 23,600+ community MCP servers — with a gateway and "Smithery Connect" handling auth in front of them. Individual servers are bring-your-own-hosted by their publishers; Smithery's own registry and gateway remain SaaS. Smithery was acquired by Arcade.dev in August 2026, and its pricing page is currently in transition.
Toolspoke vs Smithery
- Self-hosting
Toolspoke
Docker Compose and PostgreSQL 17, on every plan including Free.
Smithery
Servers in the registry are hosted by their own publishers ("bring your own hosting"). Smithery's registry and gateway are SaaS-only.
- Credential handling
Toolspoke
Decrypted inside the gateway per call, never reaches the client or the model, on every plan.
Smithery
Handled by Smithery Connect, built on the open-source agent.pw vault. No encryption algorithm is published.
- Audit log
Toolspoke
Every call writes a row — person, arguments, result, timing — on every plan including Free.
Smithery
Not publicly documented. Smithery's docs reference general usage observability, not a per-call audit trail.
- Pricing
Toolspoke
Free, or $19 per seat/month (Pro) with no seat cap.
Smithery
Unconfirmed — Smithery's pricing page carries no pricing content as of October 2026, following the Arcade.dev acquisition.
- Cost for a 3-seat team
Toolspoke
$57/month (3 × Pro seat).
Smithery
Not publicly available. Check smithery.ai directly before comparing.
Smithery was acquired by Arcade.dev in August 2026; its standalone pricing is unconfirmed as of October 2026. Verify current terms directly before relying on this page for a purchase decision.
$ curl -fsSL https://toolspoke.com/self-host/compose.yaml -o compose.self-host.yaml
$ echo "BETTER_AUTH_SECRET=$(openssl rand -base64 32)" >> .env
$ echo "CREDENTIALS_ENCRYPTION_KEY=$(openssl rand -base64 32)" >> .env
$ docker compose -f compose.self-host.yaml up -d
What this buys you
Your own Postgres, your own credential store, your own audit log. Nothing above needs an account with us: the compose file is public, and the image is public on GHCR.
When to pick Smithery instead
- You want to discover from the breadth of community-published MCP servers in Smithery's registry rather than a curated catalog.
- You're fine deploying and hosting each individual MCP server yourself, with Smithery providing discovery and auth in front of them.
- You can confirm current pricing and support directly with Smithery or Arcade.dev — the terms are mid-transition as of this writing.
Try Toolspoke on your own infrastructure
Start on the hosted Free plan, or self-host it from the start. Either way, the gateway, the credential store and the audit log are the same code.