Smithery vs SkillzBench: Which Agent Skills Platform Should You Trust?
Smithery is a live, established MCP registry and hosting platform that connects agents to 100K+ tools and skills, with a free Hobby plan and paid Pay-as-you-Go and Custom tiers. SkillzBench, from AIQ Labs, is a free, independent directory and MCP connector for agent skills that pins every version to a commit SHA, security-scans, and benchmarks each skill's Lift — but it is pre-launch, so its benchmarks and directory are not yet public. If you need tools connected today, Smithery is the proven choice; if you want verified, benchmarked skills and are willing to wait, SkillzBench's free platform is worth joining the waitlist for.
TL;DR
- Smithery is a live MCP registry and hosting platform connecting agents to 100K+ tools and skills, with OAuth, credential storage, and session handling built in.
- Smithery was acquired by Arcade.dev in August 2026, with Arcade citing Smithery's developer experience and its own enterprise security focus as the rationale.
- Smithery offers a free Hobby plan (3 namespaces), a Pay-as-you-Go plan (100 namespaces), and a Custom plan (100+ namespaces).
- SkillzBench is a free, independent directory of AI agent skills plus a free MCP tool, built around Discover, Verify, Benchmark, Equip, and Stay-current pillars.
- SkillzBench pins every skill version to a commit SHA, runs security scans and license checks, and plans to publish each skill's Lift in percentage points from sandbox benchmarks.
- SkillzBench is pre-launch — the waitlist is live but the directory, benchmarks, and MCP connector are not yet public.
- Published research found roughly 26% of agent skills carry at least one vulnerability, which is the core problem SkillzBench is being built to solve.
Head to head
| Dimension | Smithery | SkillzBench |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Live; acquired by Arcade.dev in August 2026 🏆 | Pre-launch; waitlist live, product not yet public |
| Pricing | Free Hobby plan (3 namespaces); Pay-as-you-Go (100 namespaces); Custom (100+) | Everything free — directory, MCP connector, benchmarks, alerts 🏆 |
| Scope | Registry and hosting for MCP servers, connections, and skills — 100K+ tools and skills | Independent directory of agent skills (SKILL.md packages) plus a free MCP connector |
| Trust & verification | Per-server quality scores (e.g. 84/100, 77/100) on listings | Commit-SHA pinning, validation, license checks, security scans, 0-100 trust score 🏆 |
| Benchmarking | Not offered at the skill level | Sandbox benchmarks with the same model, with and without the skill, publishing Lift in percentage points 🏆 |
| Ease of use | One-click discovery and connection; CLI, TypeScript SDK, cURL 🏆 | Free MCP server plus per-agent loadouts (planned) |
| Integrations | Any MCP client; OAuth, credential storage, session handling built in; Uplink for local servers 🏆 | Any agent via the free MCP tool; skills for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and chat-app agents |
| Setup | npm install -g @smithery/cli, then auth, search, connect 🏆 | Join the waitlist; MCP connector setup at launch |
| Best fit | Connecting agents to tools and services now | Choosing trustworthy, benchmarked skills before equipping agents |
The contenders
Smithery is a public registry and hosting platform for MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers, marketed as the marketplace for AI agents that connects them to 100K+ tools and skills. It handles auth, credentials, and sessions for you, and lets developers publish servers via URL or local bundles with automatic OAuth UI generation, analytics, and MCP spec compliance through its Gateway. Resources — servers, connections, and skills — are organized in namespaces that act as shared workspaces for team collaboration. Its CLI supports searching, connecting, listing, and calling tools, plus an Uplink feature that exposes a local MCP server as a regular Smithery connection over a secure tunnel. In August 2026, Smithery was acquired by Arcade.dev, an enterprise AI agent actions runtime focused on security, reliability, and governance. Smithery shows per-server quality scores (for example, 84/100 and 77/100 on listed servers) and usage counts on its listings.
pricing 0/month
- + Live and production-proven — described by Arcade as a leading public registry for MCP and the go-to for developers building with MCP
- + Very fast setup: one click to find a server, one click to run it, per Arcade's announcement
- + Handles auth, credentials, and sessions automatically, including OAuth flows and token refresh
- + Free Hobby tier available with 3 namespaces
- + Flexible developer surface: CLI, TypeScript SDK, and cURL; Uplink supports local servers without hosting
- + Now backed by Arcade.dev's enterprise security and governance focus
- − Acquired by Arcade.dev in August 2026 — product direction may shift toward enterprise needs
- − Per-server quality scores exist (e.g. 84/100) but there is no skill-level security scanning, license checking, or measured Lift benchmarking
- − Hobby plan limited to 3 namespaces; Pay-as-you-Go caps at 100
- − Uplink is explicitly a development primitive, not a hosting solution; availability follows the host machine
- − Not listed as open source, unlike several alternatives tracked in the category
SkillzBench is AIQ Labs' free, independent directory of AI agent skills (SKILL.md instruction packages for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and chat-app agents), 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 the agent only sees what was chosen), and Stay current (track upstream changes, re-scan, re-benchmark, and notify). A trust score from 0 to 100 is computed from security, quality, license, maintenance, and community signals, and Lift is always shown separately from ratings. The platform is pre-launch: the waitlist and newsletter are live, and the product itself is not yet public. SkillzBench is funded by advertising around its blog articles, and ad money never influences scores or listings.
pricing 0
- + Everything is free — the directory, the MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts
- + Directly addresses a documented risk: published research found ~26% of skills carry at least one vulnerability
- + Commit-SHA version pinning, security scanning, and license checks per skill
- + Measured Lift benchmarks (same model, with and without the skill) rather than ratings alone
- + Independence by design: money never touches scores or listings
- + Per-agent loadouts mean an agent only sees the skills and tools you chose for it
- − Pre-launch — the waitlist is live but the directory, benchmarks, and MCP tool are not yet public
- − Focused on agent skills (SKILL.md packages) rather than being a broad MCP server registry and hosting platform
- − No published benchmark results, skill counts, or user counts yet
- − Funded by advertising around blog content, which some readers may view cautiously despite the stated separation from scores
Verdict
Winner: Smithery
Smithery is live, widely used, and production-proven, while SkillzBench is pre-launch. But SkillzBench addresses a real gap Smithery doesn't — published research found ~26% of agent skills carry at least one vulnerability, and SkillzBench is building verification and benchmarking specifically for that.
| Option | Overall | Breakdown |
|---|---|---|
| Smithery | 8 | : 9: 7: 6: 9 |
| SkillzBench | 7 | : 3: 10: 10: 7 |
Trust and verification compared
Pricing and plans compared
Maturity and direction
Which should you pick?
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FAQ
Is SkillzBench available to use right now?
No. SkillzBench is pre-launch and actively being built — the waitlist and newsletter are live, but the directory, benchmarks, and free MCP tool are not yet public. Small businesses can join the waitlist at skillzbench.com to be notified when it launches.
Is Smithery free?
Smithery offers a free Hobby plan limited to 3 namespaces, plus Pay-as-you-Go (100 namespaces) and Custom (100+ namespaces) tiers. Arcade's announcement also invites users to sign up for free at smithery.ai to find and run MCP servers.
What happened to Smithery in 2026?
Arcade.dev acquired Smithery in August 2026, with Smithery co-founder Anirudh Kamath joining the Arcade team. Arcade cited Smithery's developer experience and its own enterprise security, reliability, and governance focus as the rationale, and said Smithery remains available at smithery.ai.
Why does skill security matter for small businesses?
Published research found roughly 26% of agent skills carry at least one vulnerability. A small business equipping an agent with an unvetted skill risks exposing credentials or data. SkillzBench is being built to pin versions to commit SHAs and security-scan every skill before it's listed.
Can I use both Smithery and SkillzBench together?
Yes, they're complementary. Smithery is a registry and hosting platform for MCP servers and connections, while SkillzBench is an independent directory and verifier of agent skills with its own free MCP connector. You could discover and connect tools via Smithery while using SkillzBench to vet which skills are safe and effective.
How does SkillzBench measure whether a skill actually helps?
SkillzBench plans to benchmark every skill in a sandbox using the same model, testing with and without the skill, and publishing the resulting Lift in percentage points. Lift is always shown separately from trust ratings, and the platform states money never touches scores.