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better-auth is a solid, well-maintained TypeScript auth library. It has more OAuth providers today, a mature Prisma integration, and a large ecosystem of community plugins. If you’re building a standard web app where human auth is the entire story, it gets you there fast. KavachOS starts from a different premise: agents are first-class entities, not OAuth clients. The comparison below reflects that split honestly. Where better-auth ships something, we say so. Where it doesn’t, we say that too. A migration guide from better-auth is coming soon.

Feature matrix

CapabilityKavachOSbetter-auth
LanguageTypeScript, MITTypeScript, MIT
Named OAuth providers2437
MCP OAuth 2.1 serverBuilt in with agent identity, delegation, and ephemeral sessionsThin OIDC wrapper plugin
Agent identityFirst-class AgentIdentity entity next to UserTreated as an OAuth client
A2A protocolServer + client + Agent Cards with JWS signingNot shipped
Ephemeral agent sessionsBuilt in with auto-expiry, action limits, and audit groupingNot shipped
Cost attribution per agent/tool/chainBuilt in with alerts and budget integrationNot shipped
Trust scoring5-level built inNot shipped
Compliance reports (EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, SOC 2, ISO 42001)Exports built inNot shipped
Unified RBAC + ABAC + ReBAC policy engineOne engineRBAC only
Approval flows (CIBA)Built inNot shipped
Verifiable Credentials audit exportOn roadmapNot shipped
Edge runtime (Workers, Deno, Bun)Zero node:crypto imports, Web Crypto throughoutPartial
DB adaptersDrizzle (core) plus Prisma (@kavachos/prisma)Prisma, Drizzle, Kysely, Mongo, Redis
Client librariesReact, Vue, Svelte, Electron, Expo, plain fetchReact, Vue, Svelte, Solid, Electron, Expo

Pick KavachOS if

  • Your app runs AI agents with their own identity, permissions, or audit requirements.
  • You need MCP OAuth 2.1 with proper agent delegation, not just an OIDC wrapper.
  • You’re targeting Cloudflare Workers, Deno, or Bun and need full edge compatibility from day one.

Pick better-auth if

  • You’re building a human-facing web app with no agent workloads.
  • You need one of the 13 additional OAuth providers it ships that KavachOS doesn’t yet cover.
  • You want a Mongo or Redis adapter and Prisma first-class support right now.
Both are MIT, both are TypeScript. The question is whether agents are part of your architecture.
Last modified on April 20, 2026