Smithery Review 2026: How It Handles Skill Security and Licensing
Smithery is a free-to-start MCP registry and hosting platform that connects AI agents to 100K+ tools and skills, with managed OAuth, credential storage, and a CLI that handles connections in a few commands — but its own docs warn that uplink forwards arbitrary traffic to your machine and that you should only uplink servers you trust. For small businesses that also want independent security scanning, license checks, and benchmarked performance for agent skills, SkillzBench is building a free directory and MCP connector that pin every skill version to a commit SHA and test it in a sandbox.
TL;DR
- Smithery is a public registry and hosting platform for MCP servers, letting agents connect to 100K+ tools and skills.
- The Hobby (free) plan includes up to 3 namespaces; Pay as you Go allows 100 and Custom plans allow 100+.
- Smithery Connect handles OAuth flows, credential storage, token refresh, and session lifecycle for managed connections.
- Service tokens support fine-grained policies — namespaces, resources, operations, metadata matching, TTLs, and experimental request-level tool restrictions.
- Smithery's own docs warn that uplink forwards arbitrary traffic to a process on the host machine and to only uplink servers you trust.
- Arcade.dev acquired Smithery in August 2026, framing the deal around enterprise security, reliability, and governance.
- Smithery is not listed as open source, and no license-verification layer is documented for published servers or skills.
Head to head
| Dimension | Smithery | SkillzBench |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Hobby (free) tier with 3 namespaces; Pay as you Go (100 namespaces) and Custom (100+) plans | Free — directory, MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts |
| Ease of use | One-click install from any MCP client; CLI with canonical workflows 🏆 | Free MCP server connects any agent to chosen skills; per-agent loadouts |
| Skill/MCP discovery | Registry of 100K+ tools and skills with usage counts and search 🏆 | Continuously crawled and deduped skills from GitHub with trust scores |
| Security handling | Managed OAuth, credential storage, token scoping, TLS tunnels; docs warn to only uplink servers you trust | Security-scan every skill, pin versions to commit SHA, re-scan on upstream changes (in development) |
| Licensing | No documented license-checking layer for registry entries | License-check built into the Verify pillar; license signals feed the trust score 🏆 |
| Benchmarking | Publisher analytics on tool calls and usage patterns; no independent performance benchmarking documented | Sandbox benchmark with the same model, with and without the skill; Lift published in percentage points (in development) |
| Setup | npm install -g @smithery/cli, browser-confirmed auth, then search and connect 🏆 | One free MCP server plus per-agent toggles (pre-launch) |
| Maturity | Live registry and hosting platform; acquired by Arcade.dev in August 2026 🏆 | Pre-launch; waitlist and newsletter live |
The contenders
Smithery is a public registry and hosting platform for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, built on the idea that finding and running an MCP server should take one click. It positions itself as "the marketplace for AI agents," letting users connect agents to 100K+ tools and skills instantly, with authentication, credentials, and sessions handled by the platform. Developers can publish servers via URL or MCPB bundle, get a dedicated server page, automatic OAuth UI generation, analytics on tool calls, and gateway-handled MCP protocol compliance. Its CLI supports searching, connecting, listing, inspecting, and calling tools, plus namespaces as shared team workspaces. In August 2026, Arcade.dev acquired Smithery, with the combined company emphasizing enterprise-grade security, reliability, and governance for production agents.
pricing 0/month
- + Free Hobby tier to get started, with 3 namespaces included
- + One-click discovery and installation of MCP servers from any MCP client
- + Managed auth: OAuth flows, credential storage, token refresh, and session handling are done for you
- + Fine-grained token scoping, including experimental request-level tool restrictions via rpcReqMatch
- + Uplink lets you test local MCP servers against real agents before publishing, with end-to-end TLS
- + Thorough documentation with canonical CLI workflows for every core task
- − Docs explicitly warn that uplink forwards arbitrary traffic to a process on the host machine — only uplink servers you trust
- − No documented license-checking or independent security-scanning layer for registry entries
- − Not listed as open source, unlike several alternatives such as CrewAI or OpenAI Codex CLI
- − Acquired by Arcade.dev in August 2026, which may shift the roadmap toward enterprise requirements
- − Uplink is a development primitive, not a hosting solution; availability follows the host machine and calls fail fast when the CLI is offline
SkillzBench is AIQ Labs' free, independent directory of AI agent skills plus a free MCP tool that connects any agent to the skills you choose. It is being built around five pillars: Discover (continuously crawl and dedupe skills from GitHub), Verify (pin every version to a commit SHA, validate, license-check, security-scan, and quality-judge), Benchmark (test every skill in a sandbox with the same model, with and without the skill, and publish the Lift in percentage points), Equip (one free MCP server plus per-agent loadouts where users toggle skills and tools per agent), and Stay current (track upstream changes, re-scan, re-benchmark, and notify). A trust score from 0 to 100 combines security, quality, license, maintenance, and community signals, and Lift is always shown separately from ratings. SkillzBench is pre-launch: the waitlist and newsletter are live, and the platform is not yet public.
pricing 0
- + Everything is free — directory, MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts
- + Every skill version is pinned to a commit SHA, with license checks and security scans
- + Benchmarked Lift in percentage points, always shown separately from ratings; money never touches scores
- + Per-agent loadouts mean an agent only sees the skills and tools explicitly chosen for it
- − Pre-launch: the product is not yet public, so businesses cannot use it today
- − Focused on agent skills rather than full MCP server hosting and connection management
Verdict
Winner: none
Smithery is a strong, free-to-start choice for discovering and hosting MCP servers, but its security posture depends heavily on user judgment, and the platform was acquired by Arcade.dev in August 2026, which may shift its roadmap toward enterprise needs.
| Option | Overall | Breakdown |
|---|---|---|
| Smithery | 7.5 | : 8: 9: 8: 6: 5: 6 |
| SkillzBench | 0 | : 10: 0: 0 |
How Smithery handles skill security
Licensing: what Smithery does and doesn't cover
Plans, limits, and the Arcade.dev acquisition
Which should you pick?
- :
- :
- :
- :
- :
FAQ
Is Smithery free to use?
Smithery offers a Hobby (free) plan that includes up to 3 namespaces, plus Pay as you Go (100 namespaces) and Custom (100+ namespaces) plans. The free tier is enough for a small business to connect a handful of MCP servers at no cost, and the Arcade.dev announcement encourages signing up for free at smithery.ai.
How does Smithery handle authentication and credentials?
Smithery Connect manages the OAuth flow, credential storage, token refresh, and session lifecycle on your behalf. For browser, mobile, or agent usage, scoped service tokens can be constrained by namespace, resource, operation, metadata, and TTL, and the CLI docs advise never passing a full API key to untrusted code.
Is Smithery secure for small businesses?
Smithery secures the connection layer well — managed OAuth, scoped tokens, and end-to-end TLS on uplink tunnels. However, its own documentation warns that uplink forwards arbitrary traffic to a process on your machine and that you should only uplink servers you trust. There is no documented independent security-scanning layer for registry entries, so vetting the tools themselves remains your responsibility.
Does Smithery check licenses on the servers and skills it lists?
No license-checking layer is documented in Smithery's docs. Registry pages link to source repositories, but verifying the license of a server or skill is left to the user. SkillzBench is building license checks and commit-SHA version pinning into its skill verification pipeline for businesses that need that diligence.
What happened with the Arcade.dev acquisition?
Arcade.dev acquired Smithery in August 2026, with co-founder Anirudh Kamath joining the Arcade team. Arcade framed the deal around combining Smithery's developer experience with enterprise-grade security, reliability, and governance, and noted that its ToolBench benchmark shows MCP growth has outpaced quality — signaling a likely shift toward production and enterprise use cases.
What are Smithery's main limitations?
Uplink is a development primitive, not a hosting solution — availability follows the host machine and calls fail fast when the CLI is offline, with latency including a round trip to your network. Only one live tunnel is allowed per connection, Smithery is not listed as open source, and there is no documented independent security or license verification for the 100K+ registry entries.