Nango
Open-source platform for building native product integrations with 250+ pre-built API connectors. Nango handles OAuth flows, token refresh, credential storage, and provides a unified interface to call any connected API. Designed for SaaS products that need to integrate with user-authorized third-party APIs (Salesforce, HubSpot, Slack, GitHub, etc.) without managing OAuth complexity per provider. Unlike Fivetran/Airbyte (ETL focus), Nango enables real-time API interactions on behalf of users.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
SOC2 Type II. OAuth tokens encrypted at rest in Nango's database. Frontend key / backend secret key separation prevents credential exposure. Connection IDs are non-sensitive references. Open source for auditability. EU data residency available.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You're building a SaaS product where users connect their own third-party accounts and you need agents to operate those accounts on their behalf without building OAuth per provider.
Avoid When
You need ETL/data pipeline integrations (use Airbyte) or service-to-service auth (use service accounts directly). Nango solves user-delegated OAuth, not all integration needs.
Use Cases
- • Enable AI agents to act on behalf of users in third-party services (send Slack messages, create GitHub issues, update CRM records) using stored OAuth tokens managed by Nango
- • Build product integrations where users connect their own accounts (Salesforce, HubSpot, Gmail) and agents operate with those credentials via Nango's proxy API
- • Eliminate OAuth implementation complexity for 250+ APIs — Nango handles token refresh, rotation, and storage so agents always have valid credentials
- • Sync data from external APIs (Salesforce contacts, GitHub repos, Notion pages) into your application using Nango's sync framework with incremental fetching
- • Implement multi-tenant credential management for SaaS products where each customer connects their own third-party accounts and agents need per-customer API access
Not For
- • Internal service-to-service authentication — Nango is designed for user-delegated OAuth, not machine-to-machine auth; use service accounts for internal API calls
- • High-frequency, high-volume data pipelines — Nango enables real-time API interactions, not bulk ETL; use Airbyte or Fivetran for large-scale data warehouse ingestion
- • Custom API integrations requiring complex transformation logic — Nango handles credential management and proxying; business logic lives in your application
Interface
Authentication
Nango uses API keys for server-side API calls and secret keys for backend-to-backend communication. Frontend OAuth connections use public keys. Connection tokens are scoped to specific integrations and users. Nango stores encrypted OAuth tokens; your application receives connection IDs.
Pricing
Open source (MIT) self-hostable. Cloud pricing based on number of active connections and integrations. Pricing can scale significantly for large user bases with many connected accounts. Self-hosting is viable for cost control.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Nango proxies API calls to third-party services — rate limits and errors from target APIs surface through Nango; agents must handle provider-specific rate limits, not just Nango limits
- ⚠ OAuth token refresh is automatic but can fail — agents should handle Nango webhook events for token_expired and token_refresh_failed to surface connection issues to users
- ⚠ Provider OAuth scopes must be configured in Nango before connection — agents requesting actions requiring ungranted scopes will fail; scope management requires re-authorization by user
- ⚠ Nango connection IDs are per-user — multi-tenant agents must correctly associate connection IDs with requesting users; using wrong connection ID accesses wrong user's account
- ⚠ Self-hosted Nango requires PostgreSQL + Redis + Node.js — more infrastructure than calling APIs directly; only worthwhile when managing 10+ integrations or 100+ connections
- ⚠ Nango's sync framework (for data fetching) and proxy (for real-time API calls) are distinct patterns with different setup requirements — don't confuse them in agent architecture
- ⚠ Some provider OAuth implementations have quirks that Nango handles internally — but provider API changes may temporarily break integrations; monitor Nango's status page for provider-specific issues
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.