Where Scalekit's free tier stops
Scalekit Scalekit's free tier stops at 5,000 tool calls per month, and that limit is a hard stop. The plan still keeps unlimited connected accounts, 500+ pre-built connectors, bring your own credentials for connected apps, and community plus email support, so the issue is not feature access. It is usage. If your product can stay under 5,000 tool calls monthly, the tier remains workable. Once you cross that line, you need either paid usage or a different platform with a higher free allowance.
Switch table
| Scalekit | Logto | Permit.io | PropelAuth | Kiro | Maxim AI | lil'bots | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| monthly active users | Unknown | 50,000 MAUs | 1,000 MAUs | 10,000 MAUs | Unknown | Unknown | Unknown |
| tool calls or execution credits | 5,000 tool calls per month | 50,000 tokens per month | Unlimited authorization queries | Unknown | 50 credits per month | Up to 10k logs per month | 3,600 execution seconds per month |
| connectors or integrations | 500+ pre-built connectors | 3 social connectors | API, SDK, Terraform, Git provider, gateway, database, GraphQL, and JWT integrations included | Unknown | Unknown | Integrations with LangChain, LangGraph, OpenAI, CrewAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, and Mistral | Built-in API access to OpenAI, Anthropic, ElevenLabs, Browserbase, Firecrawl, Google, Spotify, GitHub, and other integrations |
| projects or applications | Unknown | 3 total applications | Unlimited projects | Unlimited organizations | Unknown | 1 workspace | Unlimited bots |
| audit log retention | Unknown | 3 days | 14 days | Unknown | Unknown | 3 days | Unknown |
| teams or seats | Unknown | 1 tenant member | Shared access to workspaces and environments | Unknown | Individual use | Up to 3 seats | Unknown |
| Card required | - | No | No | No | Yes | No | Unknown |
| First paid tier | - | Pro, $24/mo | Enterprise, varies by usage | Growth, $150/month | KIRO PRO, $20 per user / month | Professional, $29/seat/month billed monthly | Pro Plan, $9.99 / month |
The alternatives
Logto
FTV 60 / 100Logto's free tier gives up to 50,000 monthly active users, 50,000 tokens per month, support for user authentication, one machine-to-machine app, account APIs, audit logs, and user management. It also includes up to 3 total applications, 3 social connectors, 1 custom domain, 1 webhook, and 3 days of audit log retention. For teams building a hosted identity layer, that is a broader free authentication package than Scalekit's usage-first cap. It falls short on connected-accounts style integration breadth and Scalekit's agent-tooling focus. Switch if you need an auth system first and your usage is measured in users and tokens rather than tool calls.
- Beats Scalekit: Higher free-scale on MAU and tokens
- Falls short: No Scalekit-style 500+ connector and tool-call focus
- Who should switch: Switch if your app needs hosted auth and identity management more than delegated tool execution.
Permit.io
FTV 63 / 100Permit.io's free Community plan covers RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, PBAC, and IaC authorization models through UI and API access. It includes embeddable authorization interfaces, unlimited authorization microservices, shared workspaces and environments, basic Slack support, up to 1,000 monthly active users, up to 20 tenants, unlimited authorization queries, and a long list of policy and deployment features including GitOps, SDKs, Terraform, hybrid deployment, and 14 days of logs retention. Compared with Scalekit, it is much better for authorization policy management. It falls short if your main need is delegated OAuth, connected accounts, and tool-call execution. Switch if your problem is policy control, not agent connector plumbing.
- Beats Scalekit: Much stronger authorization policy management
- Falls short: Does not target Scalekit's delegated OAuth and tool-call workflow
- Who should switch: Switch if you need to model and enforce authorization rather than orchestrate third-party tool calls.
PropelAuth
FTV 63 / 100PropelAuth's free tier includes 10,000 monthly active users, unlimited organizations, unlimited waitlist users, custom domain support, 2FA and RBAC, and customizable UIs. That makes it a good fit for B2B auth with org-centric user management, especially when your free limit needs to stretch beyond a few thousand active users. It falls short against Scalekit on credit-card clarity and on the agent and connector capabilities that matter for connected app workflows. The main tradeoff is that PropelAuth is centered on authentication for B2B products, not on tool-call orchestration. Switch if you want stronger org and user auth foundations than Scalekit's free plan provides.
- Beats Scalekit: Higher free MAU cap for B2B auth
- Falls short: Not built around Scalekit's connector and agent tool-call features
- Who should switch: Switch if your main pain is B2B user management and org auth, not integration orchestration.
Kiro
FTV 34 / 100Kiro's free tier gives 50 credits per month for individual use, with credits resetting monthly and usable for prompts, spec refinement, task execution, and agent hook execution. It is a lightweight free option for developers who want an agentic coding environment rather than an identity or connector platform. Compared with Scalekit, it is narrower but more directly aligned to coding tasks inside an IDE. It falls far short on monthly allowance and on any auth, OAuth, or connector features. Switch if your work is about agent-driven development inside an editor, not about powering SaaS authorization flows.
- Beats Scalekit: More aligned to agentic coding workflows
- Falls short: Far less monthly capacity and no auth or connector platform scope
- Who should switch: Switch if you want an AI dev environment, not infrastructure for delegated access.
Maxim AI
FTV 60 / 100Maxim AI's free Developer plan includes up to 3 seats, 1 workspace, up to 10k logs per month, 3-day data retention, and email support. It is a better fit if your free-tier need is observing, tracing, and evaluating AI systems rather than executing third-party tool calls. Compared with Scalekit, it gives a clearer team-oriented observability setup and a larger free usage envelope in its own category. It falls short because it is not an auth or connector product, and the retention window is short. Switch if you need logs, traces, and evals more than agent access control.
- Beats Scalekit: More free headroom for logs and team observability
- Falls short: Not an auth, OAuth, or connector platform
- Who should switch: Switch if your priority is monitoring AI behavior rather than enabling user-authorized tool execution.
lil'bots
FTV 42 / 100lil'bots lets you create unlimited bots and gives access to thousands of prebuilt bots from the bot hub, plus 3,600 execution seconds per month. That makes it a simple free playground for hosted bot creation and scripted automation. It beats Scalekit on open-ended bot creation, since the number of bots is unlimited even on the free plan. It falls short on the scale of runtime allowance and on enterprise auth features, connectors, and user-authorized access management. Switch if you want to build and run small bots, not wire up delegated access for SaaS or MCP tools.
- Beats Scalekit: Unlimited bot creation on the free plan
- Falls short: Far less enterprise auth and connector depth
- Who should switch: Switch if you need a hosted bot platform rather than an authorization layer.
Two quick picks
Logto
Logto is the closest drop-in for teams that need hosted identity and authorization with familiar OIDC and OAuth 2.1 flows. It is the least behavior change if you are replacing one auth platform with another, even though it is not built for Scalekit's connector-heavy agent tool calls.
Permit.io
Permit.io gives the most free headroom for authorization workloads because it includes unlimited authorization queries, unlimited authorization microservices, unlimited projects, and a broad policy stack. For teams whose bottleneck is authorization scale rather than connector count, it leaves the most room before paying.
Frequently asked questions
Which alternative is best if I only need auth, not agent tool calls?
Logto is the best fit for straight auth and identity work because its free tier focuses on users, tokens, applications, connectors, and audit logs rather than tool-call orchestration.
Which alternative is best for authorization policy management?
Permit.io is the strongest match if policy modeling is the main need. Its free plan includes RBAC, ABAC, ReBAC, PBAC, unlimited queries, and multiple deployment and integration options.
Which alternative has the largest free usage ceiling?
For identity-style usage, Logto has the largest explicit free ceilings among the options listed, with 50,000 MAUs and 50,000 tokens per month. For policy work, Permit.io offers the widest free authorization headroom.
Which alternatives are closest for AI agent builders?
Scalekit is the most directly agent-oriented product in this set. If you are still looking for a nearby fit, Kiro and Maxim AI are the closest on agent workflows, but they solve coding and observability problems rather than delegated access.
Bottom line
For the most common case, Logto is the best alternative if you are replacing Scalekit because you have outgrown a free auth tier and want a hosted identity platform with a much higher free ceiling. It is not a connector-first agent tool layer, but it is the closest practical switch for teams that care more about authentication, OAuth, and user management than about delegated tool execution. If your real bottleneck is policy enforcement instead of auth, Permit.io is the next place to look.
Read the full listing for Scalekit. Scores use the FTV methodology at /ftv. Browse more alternatives on /alternatives, or head-to-head comparisons on /compare.