What are the best AI agent identity vendors in 2026?

An agent identity tells a system which agent is making a request. Enterprises also need to decide who owns that agent, what it may access, and where those rules are enforced. Some products provide the identity; others govern it or enforce access to Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools. Several do more than one.

An identity provider issues the identity, but it doesn't sit in the path of each tool call, where an agent reads data and changes systems. Something there still has to decide whether this agent may use this tool, either the MCP server itself or a gateway in front of it. Okta, Aembit, and Idira now offer MCP gateways of their own. Speakeasy puts the pieces in one AI Control Plane that works alongside whichever identity provider you already run, such as Okta or Microsoft Entra: every agent has one human owner and a policy that can never exceed that owner's permissions, and the Speakeasy gateway checks the credential, the agent's policy, and the owner's current permissions on every call routed through it.

This guide sets out six criteria to test in a trial, then compares Speakeasy with Microsoft Entra Agent ID, Okta for AI Agents, Google Cloud Agent Identity, Aembit, Palo Alto Networks Idira, and SailPoint Agentic Fabric.

What is agent identity, and why do AI agents need it?

When several agents use a shared service-account credential, logs may identify the account without distinguishing which agent acted. Revoking that credential can also affect every agent that uses it. A dedicated identity and credential for each agent give teams a way to identify and revoke agents individually.

A dedicated agent identity makes the agent a principal in its own right. In Speakeasy, that identity has a human owner, a policy, and credentials that can be revoked without touching anyone else.

Agent identity overlaps with non-human identity (NHI), but agents differ from the service accounts NHI tools were built for. They decide at runtime which tools to call, and they often act for a specific person, in which case the right answer to "what can this agent do?" depends on who is driving it. That combination is what composite identity describes.

What should you test in an AI agent identity management vendor?

Six criteria separate the AI agent identity management products below. Each is something you can check in a trial with one test agent and one test user.

1. What the identity is. A dedicated agent object, a service principal with extra metadata, a workload identity derived from where the agent runs, or an OAuth client. This decides what the rest of your stack can see.
2. Human accountability. Every agent should have a named owner. Test whether the agent is blocked, reassigned, or left running when that person changes role or leaves.
3. Delegation. When an agent acts for a person, check that the request records both and that the agent is limited to what that person can do.
4. Credentials. Ask two questions: how long does the credential last, and does the agent need to store a secret? A short-lived token still needs protection. Federation and token exchange can avoid storing a long-lived key, depending on the setup.
5. Enforcement at the tool call. Identity proves who the agent is. An MCP server or gateway needs to decide whether the caller may use the requested tool and record the result. For delegated access, check whose authority the call uses.
6. Coverage. Whether the product governs only agents in its own cloud or directory, or agents built on other frameworks and running in other environments.

These jobs can be split across products. An identity provider can issue a token with scopes or roles, while an MCP server or gateway checks access when the agent calls a tool. Some vendors in this comparison offer both identity and gateway controls, so test where each policy is applied rather than assuming every identity product works the same way. Criterion five decides whether an agent's identity actually limits what the agent does, so test it first.

How do AI agent identity vendors compare?

The products cover overlapping jobs. The table compares them on the criteria above, based on each vendor's public documentation.

Speakeasy: agent identity enforced at the MCP gateway

Speakeasy is the AI Control Plane that agents connect to MCP servers through, with agent identity built in so that identity is checked where agents act. It works alongside your identity provider rather than replacing it. People sign in through single sign-on with Okta, Microsoft Entra (Azure AD), or Google, and directory sync keeps their roles current.

What the identity is. An agent is an organization-scoped principal with exactly one human owner, its own policy, and credentials that can be revoked without affecting anyone else. Tool calls, sessions, and changes are attributed to the agent, along with the person who authorized the credential and the current owner. Agents appear on the same Identities roster as people, so one page shows everyone and everything acting in your organization.

Human accountability. An agent can never do more than its owner. If the owner leaves the organization or is deactivated, the agent is blocked until an admin reassigns it, so no agent keeps acting without an accountable owner. Suspend pauses an agent's credentials, revoke ends it permanently, and every change is recorded in the audit log with its before and after state.

Delegation. For services configured to support it, Enterprise Managed Auth, currently in preview, uses Okta Cross App Access to obtain downstream access on a person's behalf. Services without that support use their ordinary connection flow. Governing agent actions with enterprise identity walks through the model.

Credentials. Workload identity lets a CI job, Kubernetes pod, or Claude Tag channel present the identity token its own platform issues and exchange it for a Speakeasy access token valid for 15 minutes, with no stored secret and no refresh token. Claude Tag, GitHub Actions, and GKE are verified platforms with their issuer and signing keys preconfigured; other OIDC issuers can be configured with an exact subject or prefix rule. Runtimes without a platform token use agent API keys, which expire after 90 days by default and one year at most.

Enforcement at the tool call. Every agent request must pass three policies, all read live:

• The credential's maximum policy, fixed when a person approved it and never widened.
• The agent's own policy.
• The owner's current permissions.

Removing a permission from the agent or its owner takes effect on the next call. When someone other than the owner uses a shared agent, each request is limited to what the agent, the owner, and that person are all allowed.

Coverage. Agents can connect with an API key, or workloads can exchange a token from a trusted OIDC issuer. The setup depends on the runtime and credential type. Delegated access through Enterprise Managed Auth supports Okta, and agents acting on their own don't depend on Okta.

Microsoft Entra Agent ID: agent identities for Microsoft tenants

Microsoft Entra Agent ID is generally available and represents each agent as a special service principal, created from a reusable agent identity blueprint. An agent can have a sponsor, the user or group accountable for it, and lifecycle workflow templates can transfer sponsorship when a sponsor changes role or leaves. When an agent acts for a person, the token's subject is the user and the actor is the agent. Agent identities hold no credentials of their own; their blueprint uses its configured credentials to acquire tokens on their behalf.

Agent identities can only be issued tokens in the tenant where they were created, and agents outside Microsoft's stack connect through sidecar or federation patterns. Extending Entra security features to agents requires Microsoft Agent 365, which is included in Microsoft 365 E7 and sold as an add-on to E5, A5, and Business Premium. Microsoft also documents how an MCP server can check Entra-issued scopes or roles before running a tool.

An organization can keep Entra for workforce sign-in and use Speakeasy's own agent identities and gateway for MCP access. Administrators can narrow each Speakeasy agent's policy to specific servers or tools, with its owner's current permissions as an upper bound. Entra-issued roles can also be checked by an MCP server, so compare where each setup enforces access.

Okta for AI Agents: workforce directory identities and Cross App Access

Okta for AI Agents became generally available in April 2026. Agents are registered in Universal Directory alongside workforce users, with assigned human owners, access certification campaigns, short-lived scoped tokens, and a programmatic kill switch.

Okta's Cross App Access (XAA) implements the Identity Assertion JWT Authorization Grant (ID-JAG). After a person signs in, an agent exchanges their ID token for a short-lived grant addressed to one downstream service, and Okta checks the person's assignment before issuing it. XAA requires the Single Sign-On product. Okta Agent Gateway puts registered agents' MCP tool calls behind an Okta-secured endpoint and applies identity and policy checks to those calls.

Okta can provide workforce sign-in and directory sync while Speakeasy manages its own agent identities and MCP access. Okta's Agent Gateway also enforces tool-call policy, making it an alternative for that part of the setup. Compare how each gateway maps identities to tool permissions and fits the servers you need to reach.

Google Cloud Agent Identity: cryptographic identity for agents on Google Cloud

Google Cloud Agent Identity gives each agent a strongly attested identity based on the SPIFFE standard, derived from the resource that hosts it. Google introduced it at Google Cloud Next, and its IAM release notes list it as generally available on April 22, 2026. Each X.509 certificate is valid for 24 hours, and access tokens are bound to the agent's certificate with mTLS and DPoP, so a stolen token is hard to replay elsewhere.

Google documents agent identities for Agent Runtime, Gemini Enterprise, and Cloud Run. Deleting an agent leaves its IAM bindings in place as inactive grants until someone removes them, and Google's documentation doesn't describe a separate human owner field.

Google IAM policies control access to Google Cloud resources, including Google Cloud MCP servers. For MCP access through Speakeasy, a workload with a supported OIDC issuer can exchange its platform token for a Speakeasy access token and act as an assigned agent. Speakeasy's gateway then applies the agent's server and tool permissions to calls routed through it.

Aembit: secretless access for agents across clouds

Aembit extends its workload identity and access management product to AI agents and became generally available for agentic AI in April 2026. It evaluates the agent's workload identity and the human operating it together in one policy decision, and agents get just-in-time access through secretless credential exchange without seeing the credentials for the backend systems they reach. Its MCP identity gateway also controls which tools an agent can discover and call.

Aembit's MCP identity gateway and Speakeasy's gateway overlap in tool access. Aembit emphasizes brokering credentials to backend services without exposing them to the agent. Speakeasy combines agent identities, owner-bounded policies, gateway access, and session controls in its AI Control Plane. Compare both approaches against the credentials and tool calls your agents use.

Palo Alto Networks Idira (formerly CyberArk): agent identity inside identity security

Palo Alto Networks completed its acquisition of CyberArk in February 2026, and CyberArk's identity security products now sit under the Idira brand. In October 2026, Idira's agent identity security became generally available, integrated with Prisma AIRS. Each registered agent gets OAuth 2.1 client credentials that generate short-lived access tokens, access policies can target individual tools on an MCP server, and audit attributes each action to the human sponsor, owner, or initiator. Zero standing privileges is available for database access, with cloud providers listed as coming soon. Idira's public documentation doesn't list pricing for these capabilities.

Idira's Identity Broker also enforces MCP tool permissions and audits brokered calls, so it is an alternative at the enforcement point. Speakeasy combines agent ownership, owner-bounded permissions, and gateway access with session guardrails in its AI Control Plane. Compare how each fits the identity and security products already used by your organization.

SailPoint Agentic Fabric: governance across agent platforms

SailPoint announced general availability of Agentic Fabric in August 2026. It approaches agent identity through governance: sensors discover agents, credentials, and MCP servers, and ownership rules assign accountable people to discovered identities. A kill switch can disable an agent that misbehaves.

SailPoint's governance view can complement Speakeasy's agent identities and MCP gateway, which applies access policies to calls routed through it. Both address ownership and inventory, so establish which product will be responsible for each job. Using both does not assume a direct integration between them.

What do non-human identity (NHI) vendors add for AI agents?

Several NHI vendors have added agent discovery. Their products can inventory agents, map them to credentials and accountable people, and flag risky access. Some identity-security products also provide credentials or enforce access, so check which functions each product covers. Parts of the category are consolidating into larger platforms. For example, Cisco completed its acquisition of Astrix Security in June 2026 and plans to fold it into Cisco Identity Intelligence, and Astrix ended standalone sales of new licenses on June 30, 2026.

Which AI agent identity vendor should you choose?

Start with your workforce identity provider, then decide which product will create agent identities, govern their lifecycle, and enforce MCP access. For most teams, the simplest setup keeps the identity provider they already run and adds Speakeasy where agents act. Speakeasy brings its own agent identities, human owners, and owner-bounded policies together with a gateway that checks access to the MCP tools routed through it, so the agent's identity and the point that enforces it live in one product.

• Okta and Entra shops can keep their workforce directory and use Speakeasy to manage agent identities and access to MCP tools through its gateway.
• Teams running agents on Google Cloud can use Google Cloud identities for Google resources and evaluate Speakeasy workload identity for MCP access through its gateway.
• Organizations evaluating Aembit or Idira can compare their MCP gateway and brokering capabilities with Speakeasy's agent identity and access controls.
• SailPoint users can evaluate Speakeasy alongside their identity governance workflows for agent identity and MCP access enforcement.

Before choosing, test how each product enforces MCP tool access. Ask the vendor to show a denied tool call, identify the agent and, if it acted on someone's behalf, the person involved, and show what happens on the next call after the owner is removed.

To run that test on Speakeasy, sign up for the AI Control Plane and create a test agent, or talk to us about rolling out agent identity alongside your identity provider.