Statio compared with building it yourself
Encrypted credential storage, access control, audit trails, multi-tenancy and rate limiting: you can build all of this, and the question is whether you should.
What you would be building
Most of it is plumbing
Encrypted credential storage, an auth layer, a logging pipeline, rate limits and tenant boundaries. Each is well understood, and each takes time to build, test and keep running.One part is easy to get wrong
A single MCP server often holds a read tool and a destructive tool. Access set per server gives an agent both or neither. Statio grants a server to a member or an agent and lets you deny individual tools on top, checked at the gateway on every call.
Side by side
| Build it yourself | Statio | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to implement | Months | Minutes to set up |
| Encrypted credential storage | Build from scratch | Built-in, AES-256-GCM |
| Access policies | Custom auth layer | Per-tool, for members and agents |
| Audit trail | Custom logging pipeline | Automatic, every call |
| Multi-tenancy | Complex to build correctly | Included |
| Rate limiting | Build and tune yourself | Per organization, by plan |
| Token lifetime | Build rotation logic | Access and agent tokens 5 min, refresh 7 days |
| Maintenance | Your team, forever | Managed for you |
Which fits
When to build it yourself
Your security requirements are specific enough that no vendor meets them.
You have a dedicated security engineering team with bandwidth.
You need to run entirely on-premises with zero external dependencies.
Timeline is not a constraint. You have months to build, test, and harden.
When to choose Statio
You want to ship this week, not in 6 months.
Your team has better things to build than encrypted credential storage.
You need audit trails and access policies for compliance, now.
You want credential storage that’s already been hardened, not one you’re building for the first time.
Your agents are already calling APIs and you need to secure them yesterday.
Lock down your first tool in minutes.
Three MCP servers, one of them hosted, and 10,000 calls a month, free and without a card. If you outgrow it the next plan is $19.
Two steps: create your account, then install the desktop app on each machine that runs an AI client.
- Keys encrypted at rest, never handed to an agent
- Cancel anytime, nothing is deleted
- How Statio handles credentials