Arcade vs Merge Agent Handler vs Composio for IT

Arcade vs Merge Agent Handler vs Composio: what does an IT lead compare?

Arcade vs Merge Agent Handler vs Composio is a choice between three layers that sit between AI agents and company apps (Arcade, Merge, Composio, checked November 2026). For an IT lead, the useful comparison is narrow: how employees sign in, who can restrict what, and what the record shows.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the standard way an AI assistant calls tools in other apps. Elaichi, the fourth column below, is built on it.

Question	Arcade (checked November 2026)	Merge Agent Handler (checked November 2026)	Composio (checked November 2026)	Elaichi
Built for	"The actions runtime" for agents (arcade.dev)	Agent products, plus IT governing employee AI (merge.dev)	Developers, plus people using Claude or ChatGPT (composio.dev)	A company's own staff
Connectors	"8,000+ permission-aware tools" (arcade.dev)	"Thousands of enterprise tools" (merge.dev)	Composio maintains them (MCP Gateway)	650+ connectors, most written by Elaichi
Address	One URL per gateway (docs)	Ask Merge	One endpoint per team (MCP Gateway)	One address for every organization
Audit	Agent, user and system per action (arcade.dev)	Searchable audit trail (merge.dev)	User, team, tool, action, outcome (MCP Gateway)	One row per call that reaches execution
Hosting	Cloud; VPC or air-gapped on Enterprise (pricing)	Ask Merge	Cloud, your VPC, self-hosted (MCP Gateway)	Hosted, in EU, US or APAC
Billing unit	Tool calls (pricing)	Usage-based, free to start (merge.dev)	Tool calls (pricing)	Seats (pricing)

Each vendor cell links that vendor's own page. "Ask Merge" marks a question Merge's page leaves open (checked November 2026), not a no.

Which fits best: arcade.dev vs merge agent handler vs composio for internal company use?

Arcade fits engineers who ship agents, Merge fits an agent product that wants connectors handled, and Composio fits teams that want one endpoint each. For employees, Elaichi is the fourth option. Whichever you pick, its sign-in model should match your directory, and an admin should be able to explain its controls to an auditor. The unit that groups tools differs: a gateway, a team endpoint or a pack of tools.

Arcade's docs say a gateway lets you "federate the tools from multiple MCP Servers into a single collection". Each gateway has its own address, https://api.arcade.dev/mcp/{YOUR-GATEWAY-SLUG} (Arcade MCP Gateways, checked November 2026). Arcade's client guide names ChatGPT, Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, VS Code and others as clients (Arcade MCP clients, checked November 2026).

Merge's page addresses IT directly. It says IT and security teams get "SCIM-based provisioning through their existing IdP, policy guardrails and DLP on every tool call", plus a searchable audit trail (Merge Agent Handler, checked November 2026). Individuals install Agent Handler as a remote MCP server and create "Tool Packs" for the systems they use.

Composio's MCP Gateway page says each team "gets its own MCP endpoint carrying only the tools it is permitted to use" (Composio MCP Gateway, checked November 2026).

Who writes and runs the connectors in each?

The answer decides who fixes a tool on the day an app's API changes. Some vendors state it on their pages, and for others it is a question to ask.

Arcade's homepage lists "8,000+ permission-aware tools, plus custom MCP you build or bring." It also says developers "can also build custom tools using the open-source Arcade framework in Python or JavaScript" (arcade.dev, checked November 2026). Ask Arcade which of the catalog tools it writes and maintains itself.

Merge's FAQ promises connectors with "built-in authentication" (merge.dev, checked November 2026). Ask Merge which connectors it authors and which come from partners.

Composio's MCP Gateway comparison names Composio as the party that maintains connections. The page also places a customer's own MCP servers behind the same gateway (Composio MCP Gateway, checked November 2026).

Elaichi serves 650+ connectors and authors and runs most of them itself. The rest are native MCP connectors: the app's vendor builds and runs its own MCP server, and Elaichi handles sign-in, access and audit. On Gold, a team can also add its own remote MCP server under the same rules.

Does each employee sign in to each app as themselves?

The difference that matters is per-person sign-in to each app against one shared account behind everyone. Ask every vendor which one a call runs on.

Arcade's homepage says "Agents act on behalf of the authenticated user, never through broad service accounts" (arcade.dev, checked November 2026). Its gateway docs offer three sign-in modes. Arcade Auth is marked for "Development, testing, internal use". User Source, recommended for production, sends people to your OIDC identity provider. Arcade Headers is a fallback where the client sends an API key and an Arcade-User-ID header (Arcade MCP Gateways, checked November 2026).

Composio's MCP Gateway page says SSO verifies the user before any tool resolves (Composio MCP Gateway, checked November 2026). Ask Composio and Merge whether a shared account can sit behind many people.

In Elaichi, each person approves their own OAuth grant, and every call acts as that person. OAuth is the sign-in handshake that gives an app limited access without a password. A connection a person makes runs on their own sign-in to the app. A connection someone shares runs every caller's call on its owner's account, so pick per-person connections when individual app permissions matter.

What can an admin restrict, and how fast does it hold?

Each product draws the line at a different unit, and Elaichi draws it at a role or one member. Ask each vendor how long a change takes to reach a live session.

Composio says administrators "can manage access by organization, team, user, agent, or toolkit, and block sensitive actions without disabling an entire toolkit" (Composio MCP Gateway, checked November 2026). Each Arcade gateway lets you "Choose exactly which tools are available" (Arcade MCP Gateways, checked November 2026). Arcade's homepage adds "pre- and post-tool-call hooks" for custom policies (arcade.dev, checked November 2026). Merge describes policy guardrails and DLP scanning on tool calls (merge.dev, checked November 2026).

Elaichi has eight built-in roles over 58 permissions, and a member holds one role. Custom roles come with Gold. Restrictions decide which connectors and which individual tools a target may reach, and restriction targets are role or user only; the organization default is the absence of a rule, which means allow everything. A rule aimed at a member can only narrow what their role allows, and never replaces or loosens a role rule. A role or restriction change takes effect within about two minutes. In Elaichi, removing or suspending a member revokes every live grant in the same transaction as the membership change, so a removed member's clients stop on their next call.

What lands in the audit record after each call?

Every product here keeps a record per call, and the fields differ. Read one real record from each in a pilot.

Arcade says "Each action leaves one record, naming the agent, the user, and the system, streamed to your SIEM" (arcade.dev, checked November 2026). Composio's gateway records "the user, team, tool, action, time, and outcome of every call" without keeping tool-call payloads, with retention from 7 days to 1 year (Composio MCP Gateway, checked November 2026). Merge describes a searchable audit trail (merge.dev, checked November 2026).

Elaichi keeps one entry for each connected-tool call that reaches execution (a call refused earlier writes none). Each row names the person, the connector, the connection the call reached and the MCP client that asked. The row logs the one path argument that names the object, as the target id, and nothing else about the arguments. Elaichi keeps 90 days of history, and export to your own Datadog comes with the Black plan.

Where does each one run, and where does the data sit?

Some products here offer to run inside your own environment, and Elaichi is a hosted service with a choice of region. Hosting rules out options faster than any other row.

Arcade's pricing page lists "Flexible deployment options on Arcade Cloud, in your VPC, or fully air-gapped" on its Enterprise plan. Free and Team are "Fully managed on Arcade Cloud" (Arcade pricing, checked November 2026). Ask Arcade which regions Arcade Cloud offers.

Composio lists three ways to run its gateway: Composio Cloud, your VPC, or self-hosted (Composio MCP Gateway, checked November 2026). Ask Merge where Agent Handler runs and where it keeps credentials.

Elaichi has three regions, EU, US and APAC, picked when the organization is created and fixed after that. The privacy policy says where each store lives.

How is each one priced: per tool call or per seat?

A usage meter bills for what agents do, and Elaichi bills for the people who use it. Which is cheaper depends on how many calls each person makes.

Arcade's Free plan includes 2,000 tool calls a month. Team is a $25 monthly platform fee plus $0.01 per tool call, and Enterprise is custom. The page lists "SSO, RBAC, audit logs, and private registry access" on Enterprise (Arcade pricing, checked November 2026). Ask which plan includes them.

Merge says Agent Handler is free to start and its plans are usage-based (merge.dev, checked November 2026). Ask Merge for its Enterprise billing unit. Composio counts each tool execution once and leaves meta tools such as tool search free. Its Pro plan is $29 a month, and SSO, SCIM and customer-managed keys sit on Enterprise (Composio pricing, checked November 2026).

Elaichi has three plans: Personal, which is free, then Gold and Black. Gold lists at $15 per user per month in USD, or $10 per user per month billed annually, with SSO and SCIM included. The pricing page shows the price for your country, and the per-seat and per-call trade-offs are set out separately.

Where does Elaichi fit as a fourth option?

Elaichi fits a company-wide rollout where the users are employees and one admin answers for all of them. It is a governed MCP control plane: one hosted address, https://api.elaichi.ai/mcp, the same for every organization.

Everyone connects Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client to that address and approves their own grant. There is no gateway or team endpoint to create per group. In Elaichi, connected tools are never listed one by one, however few there are, and the model finds them with search_tools.

Every new grant needs a person to approve a consent screen, so Elaichi does not suit an agent that runs unattended. Roles and seats describe employees, not a product's end users. A deeper look at each pairing is in Elaichi compared with Merge Agent Handler and the Composio head-to-head.

When is Arcade, Merge or Composio the better choice?

Each wins in a case Elaichi is not built for. Pick on the case, not the feature list.

Choose Arcade when your engineers ship production agents and want a runtime they can extend. The open-source framework and tool-call hooks suit custom tools and policies. It also fits a rule that the layer must run on-premises or air-gapped, which Arcade's homepage offers (checked November 2026).

Choose Merge Agent Handler when you build an agent product and want connectors and authentication handled for you. Its page also suits a security team that wants DLP scanning on every tool call (merge.dev, checked November 2026).

Choose Composio when you want a separate endpoint per team, or self-hosting inside your own VPC. Its homepage also speaks to developers building agents on its platform (composio.dev, checked November 2026).

If two people in one team need one app, buy nothing yet, as the case for skipping a gateway argues. Otherwise, check your five most-used apps against the connector catalog, and compare the wider field in the MCP gateway shortlist.