The Best Glama Alternative for Developers in 2026
Glama is an all-in-one AI workspace — a ChatGPT-like chat experience with native MCP support and access to 5,000+ MCP servers, used by 50,000+ businesses — but it does not tell you which of those servers and skills are actually safe or effective. SkillzBench is a free, independent alternative focused on exactly that gap: it verifies, security-scans, and benchmarks agent skills, pinning every version to a commit SHA and publishing a measured Lift in percentage points. If you want a team AI chat workspace, Glama fits; if you want to know which agent skills to trust before wiring them into your agents, SkillzBench is the safer starting point — and it costs nothing.
TL;DR
- Glama is an all-in-one AI workspace: a ChatGPT-like chat experience with native MCP support and access to 5,000+ MCP servers, marketed as trusted by 50,000+ businesses.
- SkillzBench is a free, independent directory of AI agent skills plus a free MCP tool that connects any agent to the skills you choose.
- Published research found roughly 26% of agent skills carry at least one vulnerability — the core problem SkillzBench is built to solve.
- SkillzBench pins every skill version to a commit SHA, runs security scans, license checks, and quality judgments, and benchmarks each skill in a sandbox with and without the skill to publish a Lift figure in percentage points.
- SkillzBench is entirely free — the directory, MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts — funded by advertising around its blog articles, with ad money never influencing scores.
- Glama hosts all customer data in the US on Fly.io, which maintains SOC 2 Type II certification, and offers a free version and free trial.
- SkillzBench is pre-launch: the waitlist and newsletter are live, but the product itself is not yet public.
Head to head
| Dimension | Glama | SkillzBench |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free version and free trial available; no public pricing plans listed on review trackers | Free — directory, MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts all $0 🏆 |
| Core focus | All-in-one AI chat workspace for teams with custom agents | Independent agent-skills directory, verification, benchmarking, and MCP connection |
| MCP/skill ecosystem | Native MCP support with access to 5,000+ servers, plus public Server and Connector registries 🏆 | Curated skills directory crawled from GitHub plus one free MCP server with per-agent loadouts |
| Trust & safety | Infrastructure security: US-only SOC 2 Type II hosting, encryption, audits, automated content moderation | Skill-level security: commit-SHA pinning, security scans, license checks, quality judgments 🏆 |
| Benchmarking | No published skill benchmarking | Every skill sandbox-tested with and without the skill; Lift published in percentage points 🏆 |
| Transparency | Terms detail credit expiry, experimental features, and moderation policies | 0-100 trust score methodology from security, quality, license, maintenance, and community signals 🏆 |
| Setup | Sign up via Google or email; workspace subscription settings available | Toggle skills and tools per agent via loadouts; agent only sees what was chosen |
| Maturity | Live product trusted by 50,000+ businesses 🏆 | Pre-launch — waitlist and newsletter live, product being built |
The contenders
Glama, operated by Glama LLC (a Wyoming, US LLC), positions itself as an all-in-one AI workspace for teams. Its sign-up page describes a ChatGPT-like chat experience for talking with AI, native MCP support with access to 5,000+ MCP servers, and the ability to create specialized agents with custom prompts. Under the hood it leverages APIs from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google alongside its own self-hosted models. The platform also runs public registries — an MCP Server Registry and an MCP Connector Registry — where third parties submit servers and integrations. On the infrastructure side, Glama stores all customer data on servers located exclusively in the United States, hosted on Fly.io (SOC 2 Type II certified), with encryption in transit and at rest, regular security audits and penetration testing, and secure backups. Content moderation is automated with staff review of flagged content. It markets itself as trusted by 50,000+ businesses. For developers, its main draw is breadth: one workspace combining chat, agents, and a very large MCP ecosystem. Its limitation for skill-safety-minded teams is that it aggregates and exposes MCP servers but does not publish skill-level security scans, license checks, or sandboxed before/after benchmarks.
pricing free trial
- + Very broad MCP ecosystem: native support with access to 5,000+ servers
- + All-in-one workspace combining chat, custom agents, and team collaboration
- + Trusted by 50,000+ businesses per its own sign-up page
- + Strong infrastructure security posture: US-only hosting on SOC 2 Type II Fly.io, encryption, audits, penetration testing
- + Free version and free trial available (per TrustRadius)
- − No published skill-level security scanning, license checks, or quality vetting of the MCP servers and skills it exposes
- − No public pricing plans listed on review trackers, making cost planning harder
- − Monthly Credits expire within the month of issuance, and topped-up balances have consumption/expiry rules
- − Features may be experimental and subject to modification, suspension, or discontinuation at Glama's discretion
- − Violations can result in termination without refund at Glama's sole discretion
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. Agent skills — SKILL.md instruction packages for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, and chat-app agents — have proliferated, but published research found roughly 26% of them carry at least one vulnerability, and until now nobody could tell which ones actually help. SkillzBench is being built around five pillars: Discover (continuously crawling and deduplicating skills from GitHub), Verify (pinning every version to a commit SHA, validating, license-checking, security-scanning, and quality-judging), Benchmark (testing every skill in a sandbox with the same model, with and without the skill, and publishing the Lift in percentage points), Equip (one free MCP server plus per-agent loadouts, where users toggle skills and tools per agent so the agent only sees what was chosen), and Stay Current (tracking upstream changes, re-scanning, re-benchmarking, and notifying). It publishes a 0-100 trust score built from security, quality, license, maintenance, and community signals, with Lift always shown separately from ratings. Everything is free; revenue comes solely from advertising in and around blog articles, and ad money never touches scores or listings. The product is pre-launch — the waitlist and newsletter are live while the platform is being built.
pricing 0
- + Completely free — directory, MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts all cost nothing
- + Directly addresses the ~26% skill-vulnerability problem with security scans and commit-SHA version pinning
- + Benchmarked Lift data (with vs. without the skill) shows actual performance impact, not just ratings
- + Per-agent loadouts give precise control over what each agent can see and use
- + Independent funding model: ads around blog content only, never influencing scores or listings
- − Pre-launch: the product is still being built, with a live waitlist rather than a live platform
- − Narrower scope than an all-in-one AI workspace — it curates and connects skills rather than providing a chat product
- − No published live skill counts or benchmark results yet, since the platform hasn't launched
Verdict
Winner: SkillzBench
For developers choosing agent skills and MCP tooling in 2026, SkillzBench wins on trust and cost: every skill is version-pinned, security-scanned, and benchmarked, and the whole platform is free. Glama remains the stronger pick if your primary need is a polished, all-in-one team AI chat workspace with broad MCP server access.
| Option | Overall | Breakdown |
|---|---|---|
| SkillzBench | 8.5 | : 10: 9: 9: 5 |
| Glama | 7.5 | : 6: 9: 5: 8 |
Pricing compared
Trust and safety: the ~26% problem
Who should switch from Glama — and who shouldn't
Which should you pick?
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FAQ
Is SkillzBench really free?
Yes — everything on SkillzBench is free: the agent skills directory, the MCP connector, the sandbox benchmarks, and the change alerts. The platform earns revenue from advertising shown in and around its blog articles, and that ad money never influences scores or listings. Trust scores (0-100) are built from security, quality, license, maintenance, and community signals, and Lift results are always shown separately from ratings.
What does Glama actually offer developers?
Glama is an all-in-one AI workspace: a ChatGPT-like chat experience, native MCP support with access to 5,000+ servers, and the ability to create specialized agents with custom prompts. It runs public MCP Server and Connector registries, uses APIs from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google plus its own self-hosted models, and reports being trusted by 50,000+ businesses. All customer data is hosted exclusively in the US on Fly.io, which holds SOC 2 Type II certification.
Why should I worry about agent skill safety?
Published research found that roughly 26% of agent skills — the SKILL.md instruction packages used by tools like Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Gemini CLI — carry at least one vulnerability. Registries give you access to thousands of skills and servers but typically don't tell you which are safe or effective. SkillzBench addresses this with commit-SHA version pinning, security scans, license checks, quality judgments, and sandbox benchmarks that measure each skill's Lift with and without the skill.
Can I use Glama and SkillzBench together?
Yes, and that's arguably the strongest setup. Glama serves as your team AI workspace with broad MCP server access, while SkillzBench acts as the trust layer: it tells you which skills are secure, well-licensed, well-maintained, and actually improve performance, then connects your agents to the ones you choose via its free MCP server with per-agent loadouts. Note that SkillzBench is pre-launch — join the waitlist to be notified when it goes live.
Is SkillzBench available now?
Not yet publicly. SkillzBench is pre-launch and actively being built: the waitlist and newsletter are live, but the product itself — the directory, MCP connector, benchmarks, and alerts — is not yet public. No live skill counts or published benchmark results exist yet; those will come as the platform launches. Signing up for the waitlist is currently the way to get access when it ships.