KavachOS vs Better Auth
Better Auth is a great open-source library for human authentication. KavachOS starts from the same open-source foundation and goes further — agent identity, MCP OAuth 2.1, and a managed cloud so you never have to run your own auth infra unless you want to.
12
unique features
10
shared
MIT
open source
Why switch
Agent identity where Better Auth stops
Better Auth covers the human auth spectrum well. KavachOS adds the AI layer on top — dedicated agent tokens, delegation chains from human to agent, per-agent permission scopes, and a full audit trail. These are not plugins; they are core primitives.
MCP OAuth 2.1 support
Model Context Protocol is becoming the standard for AI agent tool use. KavachOS ships a spec-compliant MCP OAuth 2.1 authorization server. Better Auth has no MCP support today.
Managed cloud, no ops burden
Better Auth is self-host only — you provision the database, run migrations, monitor uptime, and handle scaling. KavachOS Cloud takes all of that off your plate starting at $0, while keeping the option to self-host if you need it.
Feature comparison
| Feature | KavachOS | Better Auth |
|---|---|---|
| AI agent identity Better Auth has no agent token primitive | ||
| MCP OAuth 2.1 | ||
| Agent delegation chains | ||
| Agent permission scoping | ||
| Agent audit log | ||
| Managed cloud option Better Auth is self-host only | ||
| Open source (MIT) | ||
| Self-hosting | ||
| Social / OAuth providers | ||
| Passkeys / WebAuthn | ||
| Magic link / OTP | ||
| Multi-factor authentication | ||
| Organization / multi-tenancy Better Auth's org plugin is community-maintained | ||
| Enterprise SSO (SAML, OIDC) Better Auth has no enterprise SSO | ||
| SCIM provisioning | ||
| Machine-to-machine tokens | ||
| Brute force protection | ||
| Breach password detection | ||
| Cloudflare Workers runtime | ||
| Built-in database adapters (SQLite, Postgres, MySQL, D1, Turso) | ||
| Managed uptime SLA With KavachOS Cloud; N/A for self-host | ||
| Hosted dashboard |
Pricing
Better Auth is entirely free and open-source. There is no managed cloud offering — you pay for your own hosting, database, and ops time. For small teams this is great; at scale, the hidden cost is engineering hours.
KavachOS is also MIT-licensed and free to self-host. KavachOS Cloud adds a managed option for teams that prefer not to operate their own auth infra.
Migration
KavachOS and Better Auth share the same database schema conventions — if you are on PostgreSQL or SQLite, run `kavachos migrate from-better-auth` to generate a compatibility migration.
Replace `better-auth` imports with `kavachos`. The session, user, and account APIs are intentionally compatible so most handlers require only an import path change.
Update your adapter configuration — KavachOS uses the same adapter pattern for Drizzle, Prisma, and raw SQL that Better Auth introduced.
Add agent identity configuration if you are building AI features — this is new configuration, not a replacement of anything in Better Auth.
Optionally point your instance at KavachOS Cloud to remove the ops burden, or keep running self-hosted — both are fully supported.
FAQ
MIT licensed. Self-hostable. Runs anywhere Node runs.