Arcade vs Powabase: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)

A side-by-side comparison of Arcade and Powabase — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.

Arcade

Arcade (ArcadeAI)

Freemium

A tool-calling platform that lets AI securely act on users' behalf via authenticated integrations and developer SDKs.

Key features

Authenticated Integrations: Provides secure, managed authentication flows so agent tools can act on behalf of users without exposing credentials, triggered via user_id in agent context.
Tool Development Kit: A toolkit and CLI for building, testing, evaluating, and deploying agent tools with standardized interfaces and local development workflows.
Multi-language SDKs: Official Arcade clients for Python (ArcadePy), TypeScript (ArcadeJs), and Go (ArcadeGo) to integrate Arcade tooling into diverse applications and backends.
MCP Server Framework: An Arcade MCP framework and server templates to create, deploy, and share MCP servers that serve tools to agents and integrate with the Arcade platform.
Hosted Agent Examples: Prebuilt reference agents (chat.arcade.dev, Slack Agent, Social Media Agents, Agent TODO) demonstrating integrations and real-world agent behaviors for rapid onboarding.
Tool Testing & Evaluation CLI: Command-line tooling to locally run, simulate, and evaluate tools and agent interactions before production deployment.
Authenticated integrations (tools) allowing AI to act on behalf of users
Tool Development Kit (library + CLI) for building, testing, evaluating, and deploying tools
Official client SDKs: ArcadePy (Python), ArcadeJs (TypeScript), ArcadeGo (Go)
REST API and API documentation (docs.arcade.dev)
MCP Server Framework for creating and deploying Arcade-compatible servers
Example agents and reference apps (chat.arcade.dev, Slack agent, social media agents)
Integrations and examples using Vercel AI SDK and Next.js for chat frontends
Managed tool authentication flows (triggered via user_id in agent context)
CI/deployment-friendly repos and example deployment instructions for Next.js
Open-source repositories and community support (GitHub, Discord)

Best for

Autonomous Task Execution: Build agents that can read email, schedule meetings, and update calendars securely by calling authenticated integrations on users' behalf.
Team Collaboration Integrations: Deploy a Slack Agent that uses Arcade tools to take actions (create tickets, post updates, run queries) directly from Slack conversations.
Social Media Automation: Create agents that curate, schedule, and publish social media posts across platforms using authenticated social media tool integrations.
Developer Tooling & Rapid Prototyping: Use the Tool Development Kit and SDKs to rapidly build, test, and iterate new agent tools and CLI workflows locally before deploying.
Application Embedding: Integrate Arcade with web or mobile apps via SDKs to enable in-app agents that perform backend operations through secure tool calls.
MCP Server Deployment: Package and deploy MCP servers with Arcade's framework to share custom tool collections across teams or public tooling ecosystems.
Build conversational agents that call external services and perform actions on behalf of users
Create chatbots with authenticated integrations (Google, social platforms, Slack)
Autonomously curate and post to social media using tool integrations
Develop and deploy MCP servers and agent backends
Embed intelligent chat frontends (Next.js + Vercel AI SDK) that use Arcade tools
Prototype and test agent tools locally with the Tool Development Kit and CLI

View Arcade details

Powabase

Freemium

Backend-as-a-Service combining per-project Postgres, storage, auth, realtime, RAG pipeline and agent runtime for AI apps.

Key features

Per-Project Postgres Provisioning: Automatically provisions an isolated Postgres instance (with pgvector) per project, providing persistent storage and a vector store for RAG workflows.
Integrated BaaS Surfaces: Built-in auth (GoTrue-compatible), storage, REST (PostgREST) and realtime features that are compatible with Supabase client libraries for seamless developer experience.
Document Extraction and Indexing Pipeline: On upload, documents are extracted, converted to embeddings and indexed for retrieval-augmented generation and fast semantic search.
Agent Runtime and Tooling: Hosts an agent runtime that runs agents and enables them to call external tools over plain HTTP or the MCP protocol, simplifying tool integration.
HTTP-First API Surface: Exposes agents, orchestrations, workflows, sources and knowledge bases as plain HTTP endpoints under /api/, requiring no special SDK to drive platform features.
Orchestration and Workflows: Provides workflow and orchestration primitives to coordinate multi-agent processes, human-in-the-loop steps, and automated pipelines.
Self-Host or Managed Deployment: Offers both self-hosting options for data control and a hosted service for quick onboarding and lower operational overhead.
Per-project Postgres with pgvector for vector storage and full SQL access