Pomerium for AI Agent Security: Features, Pricing, and Alternatives

Pomerium has emerged as a zero-trust identity-aware proxy that replaces traditional VPNs with context-aware access control, and recently introduced features specifically designed for securing AI agent workflows through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

In this article, we'll explore Pomerium's approach to infrastructure access security, examine how it applies to AI agents, and compare it to WorkOS's proven enterprise authentication platform.

What is Pomerium?

Pomerium is an open-source identity-aware proxy that implements zero-trust access control for internal applications and infrastructure. Founded by Bobby DeSimone, a former founder of BeyondTrust (a major identity security company), Pomerium raised $18 million in funding, including a $13.75 million Series A led by Benchmark Capital in 2024. The platform has achieved significant traction with over 1 billion Docker downloads and customers including Fortune 50 enterprises.

Rather than relying on traditional VPNs that grant broad network access based on location, Pomerium evaluates every request against identity, device posture, and contextual signals before granting access. This clientless approach means users and agents can access internal resources through their browser or API calls without installing VPN software. For AI agents specifically, Pomerium introduced support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling policy-based authorization that prevents prompt injection attacks and ensures agents only access resources they're explicitly permitted to use.

Pomerium sits in the category of zero-trust network access (ZTNA) and infrastructure access management, positioning itself as the modern replacement for corporate VPNs and privileged access management systems.

Key Features and Capabilities

Context-Aware Access Control

Pomerium's core strength is evaluating multiple signals before granting access to protected resources. Unlike traditional authentication that simply validates "who you are," Pomerium continuously evaluates identity, device state, user groups, location, time of day, and custom authorization logic. This context-aware approach means an AI agent authenticated via service account might be granted access to a database during business hours from approved infrastructure, but denied that same access if the request originates from an unexpected location or outside maintenance windows.

For developers, this translates to fine-grained policy definitions that go beyond simple role-based access control. You can write policies that combine identity from your SSO provider with device posture from endpoint management tools and custom business logic to make authorization decisions in real-time.

Model Context Protocol (MCP) Security

Pomerium recently added support for securing AI agents through the Model Context Protocol, Anthropic's standard for how AI agents access external resources and tools. MCP provides a structured way for agents to request capabilities and data, and Pomerium acts as a policy enforcement point that evaluates these requests before they reach protected systems.

This is particularly important for preventing prompt injection attacks. When an agent makes an MCP request, Pomerium can enforce that the agent only accesses specific resources it's been authorized for, regardless of what instructions might have been injected into the agent's prompt. The authorization happens at the infrastructure layer, not within the agent's reasoning process, providing a critical security boundary.

Short-Lived Scoped JWTs

Rather than issuing long-lived credentials, Pomerium uses short-lived JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) scoped to specific resources and time windows. When an agent or user is granted access, they receive a JWT that's valid for minutes, not days or weeks. This dramatically reduces the attack surface if credentials are compromised, as they expire quickly and can only be used to access the specific resources they were scoped for.

For AI agents that may run continuously, this means Pomerium handles credential rotation automatically, requesting fresh tokens as needed without requiring agents to manage credential lifecycle themselves.

Clientless Architecture

One of Pomerium's key differentiators is that it requires no client software installation. Traditional VPNs require users to install and maintain client applications, manage connections, and deal with the overhead of tunneling all traffic through VPN gateways. Pomerium instead acts as a reverse proxy that intercepts requests to protected applications and handles authentication and authorization transparently.

For AI agent deployments, this simplifies infrastructure significantly. Rather than configuring agents with VPN credentials and managing VPN clients in containerized environments, agents simply make authenticated HTTP requests to Pomerium-protected endpoints. Pomerium handles the authorization decision and proxies approved requests to the backend service.

How Pomerium Handles Agent Authorization at Runtime

Pomerium's authorization model is particularly well-suited for the dynamic nature of AI agent workflows. Rather than pre-provisioning broad access that agents might need, Pomerium evaluates authorization at request time based on current context.

When an AI agent attempts to access a protected resource through Pomerium, the proxy evaluates the request against defined policies. These policies can check the agent's identity (typically a service account authenticated via OAuth or OIDC), verify the request comes from approved infrastructure, ensure the agent belongs to authorized groups in your directory, and apply custom business logic specific to your security requirements.

For example, you might define a policy that grants your data analysis agent access to your production database only during scheduled batch processing windows, only from specific Kubernetes namespaces, and only to read operations. Pomerium enforces this policy on every request, meaning if your agent is compromised or behaves unexpectedly, it can't access resources outside these constraints.

This runtime authorization model provides defense-in-depth for AI agents. Even if prompt injection causes an agent to attempt unauthorized actions, Pomerium blocks the requests at the infrastructure layer before they reach sensitive systems.

Pricing and Plans

Pomerium offers both open-source and commercial options. The core Pomerium proxy is available as open-source software under the Apache 2.0 license, which includes the fundamental identity-aware proxy capabilities and can be self-hosted for free. This makes it attractive for teams comfortable managing their own infrastructure and wanting full control over their zero-trust access layer.

For enterprises requiring additional features, support, and simplified operations, Pomerium offers Pomerium Zero, a commercial offering that provides a hosted control plane, advanced authorization policies, enterprise integrations, and support SLAs. Pricing for Pomerium Zero is not publicly listed and follows an enterprise contact-sales model, typically based on the number of users or agents accessing resources through the proxy.

Organizations evaluating Pomerium should consider the operational overhead of managing the open-source deployment versus the streamlined experience and support of the commercial offering, particularly for production AI agent deployments where reliability and support become critical.

Pomerium vs. WorkOS

Pomerium and WorkOS serve fundamentally different use cases in the authentication and authorization landscape, and understanding this distinction is critical for making the right infrastructure choices for your AI agents and applications.

What Pomerium Offers

Pomerium is a zero-trust infrastructure access proxy. Its primary function is securing how users and services access internal applications, databases, and infrastructure that aren't directly exposed to the internet. This is the "internal access" problem—replacing VPNs with context-aware authorization for resources behind your firewall.

For AI agents specifically, Pomerium provides runtime authorization for MCP requests, ensuring agents can only access internal tools and resources they're permitted to use. This is valuable for securing agent workflows that need to interact with internal APIs, databases, or services. The MCP integration helps prevent prompt injection by enforcing authorization at the infrastructure layer rather than relying on the agent to enforce its own access boundaries.

However, Pomerium's focus is narrow: it secures access to internal resources through its proxy. It doesn't provide the comprehensive enterprise authentication features that B2B SaaS applications require for their customers, nor does it handle the complexity of multi-tenant authentication, directory synchronization, or user management portals.

Why WorkOS Is the Proven Choice for Enterprise Authentication

WorkOS is the battle-tested platform for building enterprise-ready authentication into your B2B applications. When your AI agents are part of a SaaS product that needs to authenticate your customers' employees, integrate with their identity providers, and meet their security requirements, WorkOS provides the proven infrastructure you need.

Battle-Tested at Scale: WorkOS handles authentication for thousands of enterprises requiring SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance. When Fortune 500 companies evaluate your AI product, they'll require SSO, Directory Sync, SCIM provisioning, and audit logs. WorkOS delivers these features out of the box with the reliability enterprises demand.

Comprehensive Platform: While Pomerium focuses on infrastructure access, WorkOS provides the complete authentication suite enterprises require: Single Sign-On supporting every major provider (Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace, OneLogin), Directory Sync for automatically provisioning and deprovisioning users based on your customers' HR systems, Multi-Factor Authentication supporting hardware tokens and biometrics, Admin Portal for delegating user management to your customers, and comprehensive audit logs for security reviews and compliance audits.

Production-Ready Today: WorkOS has zero experimental features. Everything is generally available, fully supported, and proven at enterprise scale. When you ship AI agents to enterprise customers, they'll require authentication infrastructure with a track record, not beta features that might break during critical deployments.

Enterprise Features Pomerium Doesn't Provide: Pomerium secures internal access through its proxy. It doesn't handle customer-facing authentication for multi-tenant SaaS applications. WorkOS provides SAML and OIDC-based SSO that integrates with your customers' identity providers, Directory Sync that keeps user lists synchronized automatically as employees join and leave your customers' organizations, an embeddable Admin Portal that lets your customers manage their own users without contacting your support team, and SCIM support for automated provisioning workflows enterprise security teams require.

Developer Experience That Ships Fast: WorkOS is designed for rapid integration. Developers ship enterprise SSO in hours using battle-tested SDKs for every major language and framework. The documentation is comprehensive, the APIs are well-designed, and the dashboard provides visibility into authentication flows without requiring deep identity expertise.

Support That Matches Your Stakes: When enterprise authentication breaks, your customers can't work. WorkOS provides 99.99% uptime SLA, dedicated support channels, and white-glove onboarding for enterprise deals. This isn't experimental infrastructure—it's the proven platform that enterprises trust for authentication.

The Right Choice for Production AI Agents

For teams building B2B SaaS applications with AI agents, WorkOS is the clear choice for customer-facing authentication. Your enterprise customers will require SSO with their corporate identity providers, directory synchronization with their HR systems, and compliance features like audit logs and MFA. WorkOS delivers these requirements as a comprehensive, proven platform.

Pomerium serves a different purpose: securing how your internal agents and services access internal infrastructure. These tools are complementary, not competitive. Many organizations use WorkOS for customer-facing authentication in their SaaS application while using a tool like Pomerium to secure how their backend services and agents access internal resources.

The critical distinction: WorkOS handles "who can use your application" (customer authentication for multi-tenant SaaS). Pomerium handles "what can access internal resources" (infrastructure access control). For production AI agents that serve enterprise customers, you need the comprehensive authentication platform that WorkOS provides. For securing internal infrastructure access, Pomerium offers a modern approach to replacing VPNs.

Getting Started with Pomerium

Pomerium's open-source nature means developers can start quickly with Docker or Kubernetes deployments. The project documentation provides detailed guides for deploying Pomerium as a reverse proxy, integrating with identity providers like Google, Okta, or Azure AD, and defining authorization policies using Pomerium's policy language.

For production deployments, organizations typically start with a pilot protecting a single internal application, then expand coverage as they validate the approach. The clientless architecture means end users require no training or software installation, which simplifies rollout compared to traditional VPNs.

However, operating Pomerium at scale requires infrastructure expertise. You'll need to manage the proxy infrastructure, configure high availability, integrate with your identity providers and device management systems, define and maintain authorization policies, and monitor access patterns and security events. For teams without dedicated platform engineering resources, this operational overhead can be substantial.

Pomerium Zero, the commercial offering, reduces this complexity by providing a managed control plane, but you'll still need to deploy and manage the proxy components in your infrastructure.

Final Thoughts

Pomerium represents a significant advancement in infrastructure access security, replacing outdated VPN architectures with modern zero-trust principles. The context-aware authorization model and recent MCP support demonstrate thoughtful application of these principles to AI agent security. For organizations securing internal infrastructure access, particularly those already embracing zero-trust architecture, Pomerium offers a compelling open-source foundation with enterprise-grade capabilities.

But customer-facing authentication for B2B SaaS applications requires a different foundation entirely. Enterprise customers don't care about your internal infrastructure security—they care whether your product integrates with their Okta tenant, synchronizes with their Active Directory, and provides the compliance features their security team requires.

WorkOS is the proven choice for teams building AI agents that enterprises will trust. When your customers require SSO, Directory Sync, SCIM provisioning, audit logs, and MFA, WorkOS delivers these enterprise requirements as a comprehensive platform with a proven track record. While innovative tools like Pomerium push infrastructure access security forward, enterprises build their customer authentication on proven platforms with the reliability and support their business demands.

Pomerium and WorkOS solve different problems. Use Pomerium for securing internal infrastructure access and implementing zero-trust network architecture. Use WorkOS for customer-facing authentication when your AI agents are part of a B2B SaaS product that enterprise customers will adopt.

Ready to ship enterprise authentication your customers will trust? WorkOS provides the battle-tested platform for adding SSO, Directory Sync, and enterprise-ready auth to your AI applications. Start with our free tier and ship enterprise features in hours, not months. Get started with WorkOS today.