Glama vs Smithery: Which MCP Registry Wins in 2026?

How we compared Glama and Smithery

We compared the two on October 23, 2026 using only what each company publishes: Glama's homepage, server directory and its Hosting, Gateway, FAQ and methodology pages, and Smithery's homepage, pricing page, documentation and the shutdown notice at smithery.ai/future. We also read Arcade's August 5, 2026 acquisition announcement and the README and ecosystem notes of the official MCP Registry on GitHub. The comparison uses published material only, so nothing here describes performance. Catalog counts are what each homepage showed that day. Where a company does not publish a fact, such as Glama's hosting rates, we say so. The criteria: what is in the catalog and how it gets there, whether the service can run a server for you, how credentials and OAuth are handled, developer tooling, cost, and which services keep running after October 31, 2026.

What Glama is

Glama calls itself "The MCP Server Registry, Inspector & Gateway" and "a superset of the official MCP Registry." The Registry lists servers, connectors, tools and clients; on October 23, 2026 its homepage showed more than 108,000 MCP servers and about 36,000 connectors. The Inspector debugs a server from its URL in the browser, and the FAQ says it needs no install or login and that requests go from your browser to the server without Glama logging them. The Gateway is a reverse proxy between your client and your servers that adds managed OAuth, per-tool access control and call logging. Hosting runs open-source servers on Glama's infrastructure. There is also a chat app and an MCP Directory API. The homepage states the model plainly: popular servers are "Free to browse and install locally; paid to host on Glama." If it is not the right fit, our Glama alternatives guide covers other registries and gateways.

What Smithery is now

Smithery built its name as a registry with hosted, one-click connections, and its docs still describe Connect (a REST API for MCP connections with managed OAuth), Uplink, token scoping, deep links into clients, a CLI and typed TypeScript SDKs. You can no longer plan around that. On August 5, 2026 Arcade announced it had acquired Smithery, and smithery.ai/future says that on October 31, 2026 it is "shutting down Smithery's connection management services." Ending on that date: server URLs on run.tools and server.smithery.ai, the Smithery API, Connect and Toolbox, accounts and API keys, and the CLI and SDKs, which will be marked deprecated. Staying: smithery.ai as a public, non-proxied directory "now powered by Arcade.dev," with verified servers whose pages show direct vendor URLs such as mcp.linear.app/mcp. The homepage counted 27,365+ MCPs on October 23, 2026. See our Smithery alternatives page for other options.

Catalog and discovery

Glama's catalog is about four times larger and built differently. Its methodology page says it ingests and re-publishes everything in the official MCP Registry, syncs each listed server's Git history so a listing reflects a push within minutes, and re-scans on every commit. Submitting maintainers sign in through GitHub OAuth, and Glama checks that they have write or admin access to the repository. You can filter by language, hosting type (remote, local or hybrid), capabilities and official authors, and listings show letter grades for license, quality and maintenance, plus a Tool Definition Quality Score and sandbox findings marked risky (findings judged malicious send a server to review or de-listing). Smithery's catalog is publisher-driven: you submit a public Streamable HTTP URL or an MCPB bundle for a local stdio server, Smithery scans it for tools, prompts and resources, and vendors can complete an official-verification checklist. Both work for discovery, but Glama gives more signals for judging a server first, which is the core of how to choose an MCP server.

Hosting and deployment

This is where the two differ most. Glama's hosting page says each deployment gets dedicated machines, and you can deploy from the Glama registry, a GitHub repository through the Glama GitHub App, or a Dockerfile, npm package or PyPI module. Node or Python versions and build steps are configurable, health checks hit /ping with restarts on failure, and persistent volumes can mount at /data. The endpoint uses Streamable HTTP and stdio servers are wrapped automatically, so a local-only project becomes a remote MCP server your clients reach through a glama.ai/endpoints URL. Deployments are private by default. Smithery's publishing docs describe a gateway that proxies to your upstream server, but run.tools and server.smithery.ai URLs stop working on October 31, 2026. After that Smithery is a non-proxied directory: its verified pages point to the vendor's own endpoint, and you either use that or host the server yourself.

Security, auth and privacy

Glama's gateway handles OAuth 2.1 with automatic token refresh, gates requests with access tokens issued per connection profile, and lets you switch individual tools off; a disabled tool returns an error without reaching the upstream server. Its FAQ says credentials are encrypted with AES-256-GCM, and the gateway page offers an audit log export for a SIEM and alerts when a server changes its tool definitions. The trade-off, stated in Glama's own FAQ: the gateway captures full JSON-RPC payloads, so sensitive arguments can end up in logs. Smithery's Connect docs promise zero OAuth configuration, automatic refresh and encrypted, write-only credential storage powered by the open-source agent.pw project. Connect, accounts and API keys all stop working on October 31, 2026, and Smithery's notice says anyone managing MCP connections for their own users needs a replacement before then.

Pricing and costs

Glama does not publish hosting prices, and Smithery's published prices cover services that are ending. As of October 2026, glama.ai/pricing redirects to a sign-up page, and the hosting page says hosting is "billed on top of your workspace plan," metered by machine hours and egress, with the rate card in workspace settings. Browsing and local installs are free, and the Inspector needs no login. Smithery's pricing page still lists three plans as of October 2026: Hobby, free, with 50K RPCs per month and 3 namespaces; Pay as you Go at $10 per month, with 100K RPCs, 100 namespaces and usage beyond the $10 credit at $0.10 per 1K RPCs; and Custom, by contact, with an uptime SLA. Those plans cover services that end on October 31, 2026, and Smithery says it is refunding every charge since August 5, 2026 and cancelling subscriptions. Budget for Glama hosting, self-hosting, or the vendor's own MCP service instead.

Which one fits your workflow

If you only want to find a server and add it to Claude, Cursor or VS Code yourself, either directory works; Glama's FAQ says each server page provides a pre-filled config block. If you run a stdio server locally and want it reachable from several clients or teammates, Glama Hosting is the only one of the two that can do it after October 31, 2026 (Smithery's Uplink feature for exposing local servers ends with Connect). If you need one URL in front of many servers with OAuth, per-tool switches and a call log, Glama's gateway fits, but plan for payload logging if your tools touch sensitive data. If you used Smithery Connect or hosted URLs, treat October 31, 2026 as a hard deadline: copy the vendor's official MCP URL from the server's smithery.ai page and update every client config. If you build servers, publish to the official MCP Registry so aggregators such as Glama pick them up. For picking servers, start with our best MCP servers guide.

The official MCP Registry and other options

The official MCP Registry at registry.modelcontextprotocol.io is the community-owned list of server metadata. Glama says it ingests everything in it, and the registry's own docs name Smithery as an example subregistry. Its GitHub README says it launched in preview on September 8, 2025, that its API entered a v0.1 freeze on October 24, 2025, and that as a preview it may still see breaking changes or data resets. Its ecosystem notes call it a metaregistry: it stores metadata in a standard server.json format, points to npm, PyPI or Docker for the code, and expects subregistries such as Smithery and PulseMCP to add curation and extra metadata. Use it for neutral, canonical metadata and for publishing; use Glama for grades, scans, hosting or a gateway; use Smithery's remaining directory to find a vendor's direct URL. The official registry stores metadata, not server code, and does not run servers, so it does not replace Glama hosting or the Smithery services that are closing.

What we could not verify

Glama does not publish hosting rates or workspace plan prices without an account, so we cannot give a dollar figure for Glama as of October 2026. We found no Glama command-line tool on the pages we checked and did not confirm which parts of Glama, if any, are open source. Glama's counts include automatically indexed servers, not only servers it has vetted. For Smithery, we could not confirm Arcade's plans for the directory beyond the shutdown notice, whether the deprecated CLI and SDK packages will stay installable, or how many listings will remain verified after October 31, 2026.

The Verdict

Glama wins this comparison in October 2026, mainly because it is the one of the two that offers hosting and a gateway after October 31. Use it when you need a server running at a URL, one gateway with OAuth and logs in front of several servers, or detailed signals for judging a server before installing it. Check the hosting rate card in your workspace subscription settings before you commit.

Keep Smithery as a lookup tool. Its directory stays online under Arcade, and its verified pages will show each vendor's own MCP URL, which is what you should connect to. If any client config still points at run.tools or server.smithery.ai, replace it before October 31, 2026. For servers you publish yourself, start with the official MCP Registry so every aggregator can pick them up.

Sources

• Glama homepage
• Glama MCP server directory
• Glama MCP Hosting
• Glama MCP Gateway
• Glama MCP FAQ
• Glama indexing methodology
• Smithery homepage
• Smithery pricing
• Smithery shutdown notice
• Smithery documentation index
• Smithery Connect docs
• Smithery publishing docs
• Smithery CLI repository
• Arcade: Smithery joins Arcade
• Official MCP Registry
• MCP Registry repository
• MCP Registry ecosystem vision