Composio vs. Stow: Two Ways to Connect AI Agents to Your Tools
Composio and Stow both let Claude and Cursor connect to your tools. The difference is what happens in between — and how much control you keep.
Both Composio and Stow solve the same problem: connecting AI agents like Claude and Cursor to external services — Gmail, GitHub, Slack, Notion, and hundreds more. The difference is in what they optimize for. Composio is built for developers who want broad service coverage fast. Stow is built for teams where control, audit, and human oversight aren't optional.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Composio | Stow |
|---|---|---|
| Number of integrations | 250+ | 25+ (growing) |
| Operation-level permissions | Limited | Full — per operation, per agent |
| Approval queue (human-in-the-loop) | No | Yes — configurable per operation |
| Activity audit log | Basic | Full — every tool call logged |
| Security Baseline | No | Yes — locked session scope |
| Zero-Retention payload policy | No | Yes — content never stored |
| OAuth proxying (agent never holds token) | Partial | Yes — credentials stay server-side |
| Cursor MCP SSE config | Yes | Yes |
| Claude Desktop OAuth | Yes | Yes |
| ChatGPT plugin support | Yes | Yes |
| Risk scoring per action | No | Yes |
| EU AI Act compliance logging | No | Yes |
What Composio Is Optimized For
Composio's strength is breadth. With 250+ integrations and a developer-first API, it's designed to get an AI agent connected to a new service as fast as possible. If you're building an AI product and need to ship integrations quickly, Composio gives you a lot of prebuilt connectors.
The Composio model is: connect your agent, authenticate to the service, and let the agent call whatever it needs. The assumption is that the developer trusts the agent and optimizes for capability over restriction.
What Stow Is Optimized For
Stow is built for the question: "What can this AI agent actually do to my production systems — and who approved it?" The core design decisions all flow from that:
The Permission Model Difference
This is the most important functional difference. Composio's permission model is service-level: you authorize the integration, and the agent gets access to what the service's OAuth scope allows.
Stow's permission model is operation-level: you configure each operation independently. For GitHub, that means configuring "Read PR diff" separately from "Comment on PR" separately from "Approve PR" separately from "Delete repository." Each one is independently Allowed, Approval Required, or Off.
Composio permission model
"GitHub integration connected. Agent can access GitHub."
Stow permission model
Which One to Use
Use Composio if...
- —You're building an AI product and need 100+ integrations
- —You need to ship fast and permissions aren't a primary concern
- —Your agent is in a personal or sandboxed environment
- —Breadth of coverage matters more than depth of control
Use Stow if...
- —Your agent touches production data, team inboxes, or shared services
- —You need an audit trail for compliance or incident investigation
- —You want humans in the loop before high-stakes actions execute
- —You're subject to AI regulation (EU AI Act, SOC 2, etc.)
The two tools can also coexist. Some teams use Composio for low-stakes integrations (internal tools, personal agents, rapid prototyping) and Stow for anything that touches production systems, external communications, or regulated data. They're not mutually exclusive.
Stow Security Team
April 19, 2026