Magic
Magic provides passwordless authentication via email magic links, passkeys, and SMS OTP, issuing DID-based identity tokens that agents can use to authenticate users without passwords or stored credentials.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
DID tokens are cryptographically signed and non-forgeable; however, there are no granular permission scopes on DID tokens — any token holder has full user identity access.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
Best when an agent application needs frictionless user onboarding with no password management and optional Web3 wallet capabilities.
Avoid When
Avoid when users operate in environments with unreliable email delivery or when enterprise SSO with SAML 2.0 is the primary requirement.
Use Cases
- • Authenticating end-users into an agent-powered app without requiring them to set or remember a password
- • Issuing a user session token after email magic-link verification to gate access to agent-driven workflows
- • Integrating passkey-based biometric login for mobile agent apps where frictionless auth is critical
- • Using Magic's Dedicated Wallet to issue Ethereum-compatible wallets to authenticated users for Web3 agent flows
- • Validating DID tokens server-side to authorize agents acting on behalf of verified users
Not For
- • Applications that require username/password login as a primary flow (Magic does not offer password auth)
- • High-volume server-to-server machine auth where human user identity is not involved
- • Environments that cannot deliver email or SMS to the end-user during the auth challenge
Interface
Authentication
Public API key initializes the client SDK; Secret key is used server-side to validate DID tokens via Magic Admin SDK. DID tokens are short-lived (15 minutes default) and carry user identity claims.
Pricing
Dedicated Wallets (Web3 feature) are priced separately per wallet provisioned; email delivery costs are bundled into the MAU price.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ DID tokens expire after 15 minutes by default — agents with long-running tasks must refresh the token before making server-side validation calls or face 401 rejections
- ⚠ The magic link flow requires a browser redirect to complete; headless agents cannot complete the auth loop without orchestrating a user-facing browser session
- ⚠ Magic does not support webhooks, so agents cannot receive push notification when a user completes or abandons a magic link — polling or user confirmation is required
- ⚠ The Admin SDK's validateToken() call makes a network request to Magic's servers on every validation; caching is not built in, and high-frequency calls may create latency spikes
- ⚠ Allowed domains must be whitelisted in the Magic dashboard; deploying an agent to a new subdomain or environment without updating the allowlist causes silent auth failures
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.