AgentID vs Descope Agentic Identity Hub: Portable agent sign-in vs an identity platform for MCP and delegation
Descope's Agentic Identity Hub secures MCP servers, vaults credentials, and enforces per-agent policies inside your deployment. AgentID gives agents one identity that works at any app's login page, with the owner's email behind it.
- AgentID
TL;DR
Descope's Agentic Identity Hub secures agents and MCP servers inside a deployment you administer, with per-agent scopes, a credential vault, and policy controls. AgentID is a public OpenID Connect provider for the opposite case: an agent signing in at an app that has never heard of its operator.
Descope's Agentic Identity Hub secures agents and MCP servers inside a deployment you administer, with per-agent identities, tool-level scopes, a credential vault, policy controls, and audit logging. AgentID is a public OpenID Connect provider for the opposite case: an agent signing in at an application that has no relationship with its operator. Descope governs identity inside a perimeter, while AgentID makes an agent verifiable outside every perimeter and carries the owner's email to registered clients.
What is Descope Agentic Identity Hub?
Descope's Agentic Identity Hub provides identity infrastructure for AI agents and MCP servers, aimed at three audiences: MCP server developers, agent builders, and the security teams governing both. Its pieces: dedicated per-agent identities carrying "associated users, tenants, tool-level scopes"; MCP authentication built on OAuth 2.1 and PKCE with granular scope assignment; credential management issuing "portable, revocable tokens designed specifically for agents" backed by 50+ prebuilt connection templates; policy controls for per-agent and per-tool access; and audit logging that records "every AI agent's identity, the delegating user, and the tools / scopes / MCP servers" involved.
The platform supports ephemeral scoped credentials, JWT-based authorization, a credential vault with refresh, step-up authentication for sensitive operations, multi-tenant policy engines, SIEM export, and "Bring Your Own Auth" federation with existing IdPs. Descope has iterated quickly here, with 2.0 and 2.5 releases expanding policy controls and ecosystem integrations.
It is a serious platform, and its center of gravity is the deployment you control: your MCP servers, your agents, your tenants, your policies.
What is AgentID?
AgentID is a "Sign in with AgentID" button run by AgentMail as a standard OpenID Connect provider. An agent authenticates as itself with a signing credential that never leaves it; the app verifies a fresh one-time signature against published keys and receives an ES256-signed id_token with a stable subject and the agent's live-verified inbox address.
Two tiers. Open clients integrate with no registration (openid, email and profile scopes; the client_id is a URL the app controls). Registered clients, created in the AgentID console or with the CLI, add a client secret and the owner_profile and owner_email scopes. The owner claims arrive in the id_token and from the userinfo endpoint. If the agent isn't allowed to share its owner, the organization owner has to approve the sign-in, so the app never gets a token without the claim. Free for apps.
Inside vs outside
Descope governs identity within a perimeter someone administers. AgentID handles the moment an agent leaves one.
| AgentID | Descope Agentic Identity Hub | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the identity lives | A public OIDC provider on the open web | Your Descope deployment, scoped to your tenants, subject to your policies |
| The moment it covers | An agent leaving any perimeter: signing up for a SaaS tool, authenticating to a consumer app, arriving anywhere that has never heard of the organization behind it | Agents operating inside a perimeter someone administers |
| Who has to verify it | Strangers, so identity must be verifiable by anyone and must carry accountability with it | The administering organization |
| Relationship required with the agent's operator | None at all | The agents are yours, in your deployment |
Enterprise identity platforms exist for the first column's opposite case, and agents genuinely need that too. What a public OIDC provider with an owner claim adds is identity that survives outside the deployment.
Side-by-side
| AgentID | Descope Agentic Identity Hub | |
|---|---|---|
| For | Apps accepting agent sign-ins from anywhere; agent developers | Teams securing their own MCP servers, agents, and tool connections |
| Cross-app support | Yes, one identity valid at any OIDC-capable app | Identities live in your Descope deployment; external reach via federation you configure |
| Owner email support | Yes, owner_email scope; never a token missing the claim | Tracks delegating users internally for audit; no owner claim presented to unaffiliated apps |
| Standards support | Standard OIDC: code flow + PKCE (S256), ES256, RFC 7591 | OAuth 2.1, PKCE, JWT authorization, IdP federation |
| Pricing | Free for apps | Not published on the product page; platform pricing |
| Time to integrate | Minutes on an existing OIDC stack; two config values | Platform adoption: tenants, policies, templates, per-tool scopes |
| Who owns the identity root | AgentMail inbox controlled by the agent's owner | Your organization's Descope project |
When to choose Descope
Choose the Agentic Identity Hub when you operate the surface being secured. If you are shipping an MCP server and need OAuth 2.1 in front of it, or running a fleet of agents whose tool access needs scoping, vaulting, step-up auth, and SIEM-visible audit, this is the category Descope built for, and the 50+ connection templates shorten real work. Security teams get a policy engine; developers avoid hand-rolling OAuth.
Its identities serve your deployment. They are not designed as a credential an agent presents at an arbitrary login page, and outside apps have no way to verify them or learn an owner from them.
When to choose AgentID
Choose AgentID for the login page. If you build apps and want agent traffic disclosed, identified, and accountable, the button gives you that with two configuration values: every AgentID sign-in is an agent by definition, resolves to a stable subject, and, with registration, carries the owner's email for per-human limits, KYC pass-through, and abuse control. If you build agents, AgentID is an identity that works everywhere the button does, anchored to a working email inbox, without lending the agent your credentials.
Running both is coherent: Descope securing your MCP and tool layer, AgentID identifying your agents to the outside world (or identifying outside agents to your app).
Get started
Add AgentID as a custom OIDC provider with two values, or create an AgentID application for owner scopes. Guides at www.agentid.com/docs.
