Credo AI for Agentic Security: Features, Governance, and Alternatives

In this article, we'll examine Credo AI's approach to agent governance and compare their offering to production-ready alternatives like WorkOS that enterprises rely on for agent authentication and authorization at scale.

What is Credo AI?

Founded in 2020 and based in Palo Alto, Credo AI has established itself in the AI governance and compliance space, earning recognition as a Leader in the Forrester Wave AI Governance Q3 2025 report with top scores across 12 evaluation criteria.

The platform targets enterprises across financial services, life sciences, insurance, healthcare, government, and retail sectors, with notable Fortune 500 customers including Microsoft, Amazon, Mastercard, Booz Allen, and Databricks.

Credo AI focuses on governance-layer concerns: policy definition, risk assessment, regulatory compliance, and cross-functional collaboration. Rather than providing authentication and authorization infrastructure, Credo AI helps organizations document AI systems' compliance with regulatory frameworks like the EU AI Act, NIST Risk Management Framework, and ISO 42001.

Key Features and Capabilities

AI and Agent Registry

Credo AI's registry capabilities provide inventory discovery and tracking across an organization's AI systems. The Agent Registry offers visibility into agent capabilities, access levels, and autonomy configurations, helping organizations answer "what AI systems are we running?" across distributed teams.

Policy Intelligence and Regulatory Automation

The platform includes modular policy packages aligned with the EU AI Act, NIST RMF, and ISO 42001. Policy Intelligence allows organizations to define governance policies centrally and track implementation across AI systems. The platform auto-generates alignment documentation for regulatory audits, claiming to reduce manual governance work by 60%.

Risk Management and Monitoring

Credo AI's Risk Center provides a unified dashboard with real-time monitoring that alerts teams when agents deviate from defined parameters. The platform includes guardrails for LLM risks and integrates with MLOps tools. The Vendor Portal enables third-party AI vendor risk assessments.

Governance Workspace

Credo AI provides an AI Governance Workspace for cross-functional collaboration across product, legal, data, and security teams. The platform tracks mitigation actions and claims to increase team collaboration by 3x.

How Credo AI Handles Agent Governance

Credo AI's approach centers on visibility, policy enforcement, and regulatory documentation rather than runtime authentication and authorization. The Agent Registry tracks what agents exist, their capabilities, access levels, and autonomy configurations for compliance documentation.

However, Credo AI operates at the governance layer—documenting what agents do—rather than providing the authentication and authorization infrastructure that determines what agents can do.

When AI agents need to authenticate to enterprise systems or access customer data, Credo AI documents those capabilities for compliance but doesn't provide the underlying auth infrastructure. Enterprises still need battle-tested authentication infrastructure to actually secure agent access to systems and data.

Pricing and Plans

Credo AI does not publish pricing publicly, operating on a tiered subscription model tailored to organization size and requirements. Organizations must contact sales for custom quotes. The platform offers limited-time free trials and complementary advisory services including governance workshops and proof-of-value engagements.

What Credo AI Offers vs. Why WorkOS Is the Proven Choice

What Credo AI Offers

Credo AI provides a governance platform for documenting, tracking, and demonstrating compliance around AI systems and agents. The platform helps organizations create audit trails, generate regulatory reports, and coordinate governance activities. For enterprises in heavily regulated industries like financial services and healthcare, Credo AI offers frameworks aligned with emerging AI regulations.

The platform addresses governance questions: What AI systems exist? Who approved them? Are they aligned with policy? However, Credo AI operates at a documentation layer rather than providing the authentication and authorization infrastructure that AI agents require. Organizations using Credo AI still need separate authentication infrastructure to secure agent access.

Why WorkOS Is the Proven Choice for Production AI Agents

When enterprises build AI agents that need to authenticate users, access customer data, and operate across multiple systems, they require battle-tested authentication infrastructure—not governance documentation platforms. WorkOS provides the proven auth foundation that production AI agents depend on.

Battle-Tested at Scale: WorkOS powers authentication for thousands of production applications, processing millions of auth events daily with 99.99% uptime. Enterprises requiring SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance trust WorkOS with their most sensitive authentication workflows. While Credo AI documents governance policies, WorkOS enforces access control in real-time.

Comprehensive Auth Platform: WorkOS provides complete authentication infrastructure: Enterprise SSO, Multi-Factor Authentication, Directory Sync, Admin Portal, Fine-Grained Authorization (FGA), and comprehensive audit logs. These aren't governance frameworks—they're production-grade infrastructure that determines what your AI agents can actually access. Credo AI documents policies; WorkOS enforces them.

Production-Ready Today: Every WorkOS feature is generally available and fully supported with enterprise SLAs. When you ship an AI agent that authenticates via SSO or syncs permissions from customer directories, you're deploying infrastructure that thousands of enterprises trust in production.

Enterprise Features Credo AI Doesn't Provide: WorkOS delivers Enterprise SSO with support for Okta, Microsoft Entra, Google Workspace, and dozens of identity providers. Directory Sync via SCIM automatically provisions user access. The Admin Portal gives customers self-service control. Fine-Grained Authorization enables attribute-based access control. These are infrastructure requirements that enterprise customers demand.

Developer Experience That Matches Your Timeline: WorkOS enables developers to ship enterprise-grade authentication in hours. Comprehensive SDKs and straightforward APIs mean your team integrates proven auth infrastructure without becoming identity specialists.

The Right Choice for Production Agentic Security

For enterprises building AI agents that need to authenticate to systems and access customer data, WorkOS provides the infrastructure that production deployments require. Governance platforms like Credo AI help document compliance for regulatory purposes. But governance documentation doesn't secure agent access—proven auth infrastructure does.

Bottom line: Credo AI documents governance for regulatory compliance; WorkOS provides the authentication infrastructure that secures production AI agents.

Getting Started with Credo AI

Organizations interested in Credo AI begin with a sales engagement. The vendor offers advisory services including governance workshops and proof-of-value engagements. Implementation involves integrating with MLOps tools, configuring policy frameworks, and onboarding cross-functional teams. Implementation complexity depends on organizational structure, existing governance processes, and regulatory scope.

Final Thoughts

Credo AI has built a governance platform addressing enterprise needs around AI compliance and regulatory documentation. As AI regulations mature—particularly with the EU AI Act—platforms that help organizations demonstrate compliance serve an important function. For enterprises in heavily regulated industries, Credo AI offers frameworks aligned with regulatory standards.

However, governance documentation operates at a different layer than authentication and authorization infrastructure. While Credo AI documents governance policies, it doesn't provide the authentication infrastructure that determines what agents can access. Enterprises building production AI agents need both: governance for compliance and proven auth infrastructure for securing access.

WorkOS provides what production AI agents require: battle-tested authentication and authorization infrastructure. When your AI agents need to authenticate via Enterprise SSO, enforce authorization policies, sync permissions from directories, and generate audit logs, you're solving an infrastructure problem. WorkOS is proven infrastructure, deployed in thousands of production applications and trusted by enterprises across industries.

Governance platforms like Credo AI help navigate regulatory complexity. But when it comes to securing AI agent access to systems and data—the foundational security layer—enterprises build on WorkOS.

Ready to secure your AI agents with proven authentication infrastructure? WorkOS provides enterprise-grade SSO, Directory Sync, Fine-Grained Authorization, and more—everything your production AI agents need. Start your free trial to see how straightforward enterprise auth can be.