AI Agent Trust & Governance
Arcade vs Workato: which supports multi-user “act on behalf of user” permissions plus SSO/RBAC for an agent product?
8 min read
Workato and Arcade both help you connect systems and automate work, but they’re built for very different realities. If you’re shipping a multi-user agent product that needs to “act on behalf of the user” with SSO and RBAC, those differences matter more than the feature checkboxes.
Quick Answer: Workato is a powerful enterprise automation/iPaaS for workflow bots, but it’s fundamentally built around service accounts, shared connections, and recipes. Arcade is an MCP runtime built specifically for multi-user AI agents: agents act with user-specific permissions (not shared bots), plug into your SSO/RBAC, and keep OAuth tokens out of the LLM. For a true “act-as-user” agent product with SSO/RBAC, Arcade is the better fit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which platform actually supports multi-user “act on behalf of user” permissions for an AI agent?
Short Answer: Arcade is designed for per-user “act as the user” authorization for AI agents; Workato is optimized for shared automations powered by central connections and service accounts.
Expanded Explanation:
In a multi-user agent product, each end-user should see only their own data and actions: emails sent from their inbox, calendar events on their calendar, CRM changes only where they have access. That means the agent must authenticate per user and enforce authorization per call. Arcade is built around this reality: “Secure Agent Authorization” where agents act with user-specific permissions—not service accounts—and tokens are managed in the runtime, not the model.
Workato, in contrast, comes from the iPaaS/workflow world: you create recipes and connections (often via an admin or service account) and then run automations triggered by events. You can implement some user-context behavior, but it’s not natively an “N end-users, N distinct OAuth identities, all mediated via an AI agent” runtime. You’ll typically end up with shared credentials or a small pool of service accounts, which breaks clean user-level permission boundaries for agents.
Key Takeaways:
- Arcade is purpose-built so agents act with per-user OAuth identities and permissions.
- Workato is great for centralized workflows but not optimized for multi-user agent authorization.
How would I implement “act-as-user” with SSO/RBAC on each platform?
Short Answer: With Arcade, you wire your agent to auth.start for each user, lean on your existing SSO/IDP, and let the runtime enforce user-specific permissions. With Workato, you’d mostly be layering your own user/session model on top of shared connections and recipes.
Expanded Explanation:
On Arcade, the flow looks like building any well-structured multi-tenant SaaS auth layer—just tailored to agents and MCP tools. You kick off OAuth via the Arcade SDK (e.g., client.auth.start(user_id, "google")), let Arcade handle token persistence and refresh, and then call MCP tools like Google.SendEmail or Gmail.ListEmails. The runtime injects user-specific credentials at call time, never exposing tokens to the model.
On Workato, implementing a similar pattern involves workarounds. You’ll design your own mapping between end-users and Workato connections, deal with rotating or sharing those connections, and then figure out how to thread user identity into each recipe. The platform is excellent at orchestrating APIs and events, but you’re owning the multi-user, per-agent authorization semantics yourself.
Steps:
- With Arcade:
- Map your product’s user ID to an Arcade user.
- Call
auth.startto initiate OAuth (Google, Slack, Salesforce, etc.) via your IDP/SSO. - Let Arcade manage tokens and permissions, then call MCP tools from your agent (e.g.,
Google.CreateEvent,Slack.PostMessage) with user-specific scopes.
- With Workato:
- Create connections (often shared or admin-level) to target systems.
- Build recipes to perform actions based on triggers or pseudo “agent” requests.
- Build custom logic to map end-users to these connections, and ensure your app enforces which recipes/actions each user can drive.
- Integration into your agent:
- Arcade: attach Arcade’s MCP runtime or gateway to your agent (Claude, LangGraph, Cursor, etc.) and let it call tools directly.
- Workato: have the agent invoke HTTP endpoints or APIs that trigger Workato recipes, then interpret results.
How do Arcade and Workato compare on SSO, RBAC, and overall security for agent products?
Short Answer: Both offer enterprise controls, but Arcade’s controls are wired specifically into agent authorization (user-specific permissions, zero token exposure to LLMs), while Workato’s are geared toward admin-managed automations and connectors.
Expanded Explanation:
Workato gives enterprises SSO, RBAC, and governance for who can build and run recipes. It’s strong on “who can create automations” and “which connectors can be used.” But the core security model centers on shared automations executing with a central set of credentials.
Arcade takes those security primitives and pivots them to agents: agents act with the end-user’s identity, OAuth scopes are enforced at the tool level, credentials stay isolated from the model, and you get lifecycle governance around which tools/agents can perform which actions. Authorization is enforced in code at the runtime, not in prompts or vague “do not do X” instructions.
Comparison Snapshot:
- Option A: Arcade (MCP runtime for agents)
- SSO/IDP integration focused on end-user authentication into your agent product.
- User-specific OAuth and permissions for each tool call (e.g., email/calendar/CRM).
- Zero token exposure to LLMs; tokens stored and refreshed by the runtime.
- Audit logs and governance tailored to “this agent took this action as this user.”
- Option B: Workato (enterprise iPaaS/workflow)
- SSO/RBAC focused on who can access the Workato platform and manage recipes.
- Connections often implemented as shared or admin accounts powering workflows.
- Governance focused on recipe execution and connector usage, not per-user agent authorization.
- Best for:
- Use Arcade when you’re building a multi-user AI agent product and need “act on behalf of user” with clean SSO/RBAC semantics.
- Use Workato when you’re orchestrating system-to-system workflows and business automations, with occasional AI in the loop.
What does implementation look like if I’m building an agent UI and backend today?
Short Answer: With Arcade, your stack is “agent + MCP runtime + tools,” where each user authenticates once and the agent can safely act on their behalf. With Workato, your stack is “agent + Workato APIs/recipes,” and you’ll bolt on multi-user auth yourself.
Expanded Explanation:
Arcade is “the runtime between AI and action.” You keep your frontend (React, Next.js, etc.), your agent brain (Claude, LangGraph, LangChain, custom orchestrator), and you plug in Arcade as the MCP runtime. Developers work with SDK calls like client.auth.start(...) and MCP tool invocations (e.g., Google.SendEmail, Google.CreateEvent, Slack.PostMessage) while Arcade handles OAuth, token refresh, and scoped permissions. Deployment options span cloud, VPC, on-prem, and fully air-gapped.
With Workato, your implementation centers on recipes and connectors. The agent would likely call your own backend endpoints, which then call Workato to execute flows. That can work well when you’re automating back-office processes (e.g., “when a deal closes in Salesforce, create a project in Asana”), but the agent is not naturally first-class in the architecture. You’ll also need to solve per-user identity and permission mapping above Workato’s constructs.
What You Need:
- For Arcade:
- An agent framework (Claude + MCP, LangGraph, Cursor, or similar).
- Arcade account + SDK (Python/JavaScript) wired into your backend to manage auth and call tools.
- For Workato:
- Workato workspace with configured connections and recipes.
- A backend service to map users to recipes/connections and expose endpoints for your agent to call.
Which is the better strategic fit if I’m building a multi-tenant agent product (not just internal automation)?
Short Answer: Strategically, Arcade aligns with building a multi-tenant agent product where each customer’s users have their own permissions and SSO; Workato aligns with building internal automations driven by shared workflows.
Expanded Explanation:
If your roadmap includes “agent as a product,” not just “AI as a feature inside operations,” you’re going to run into the same issues most teams hit:
- Service-account bots don’t match real user permissions.
- Refresh tokens break.
- Security teams block rollouts when they don’t see clear authorization boundaries and audit trails.
Arcade’s design is a direct response to those pains. It gives you SDK-first patterns, MCP tools optimized for agent reliability (not just raw API wrappers), and a runtime that your security team can reason about: scoped OAuth, identity provider integration, audit logging, RBAC, and strict token isolation from the LLM.
Workato is a strong choice if your primary problem is orchestrating business processes and integrations, with AI occasionally calling into those recipes. But as soon as your agent becomes multi-tenant and user-facing—logging into Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, Linear on behalf of each person—Arcade’s “Secure Agent Authorization” model maps much more cleanly to the problem.
Why It Matters:
- Impact on security & trust: Per-user “act-as” behavior with SSO/RBAC is how you ship agents that security teams actually approve and end-users actually trust.
- Impact on scalability: A runtime that bakes in user-specific authorization and token management saves you from rebuilding an auth layer for every integration and every agent.
Quick Recap
Workato is a powerful enterprise iPaaS designed around recipes, connectors, and shared automations. It shines when you’re orchestrating workflows across systems with a small set of privileged connections. Arcade is an MCP runtime built specifically for AI agents: agents act with user-specific permissions, integrate cleanly with your SSO/RBAC and OAuth flows, and execute tools like Google.SendEmail and Slack.PostMessage with zero token exposure to the LLM. If your core question is “which supports multi-user ‘act on behalf of user’ plus SSO/RBAC for an agent product?”, Arcade is the platform that actually matches that requirement.