Methodology · v1.1
The Agent Readiness Index
MartechDB's Agent Readiness Index scores how easily an AI agent can start working with a marketing tool today, out of 100, from the vendor's own official MCP server.
By Stuart Brameld · Version 1.1, published 10 October 2026
01
What it measures
Not how good the product is, but how much stands between an AI agent and the product: whether there's an official way in, whether anything has to be installed, how sign-in works, whether you can see what the agent will be able to do, and what it costs to start.
The criteria are in the order that matters most to a marketing team connecting a tool today, and each is worth more than the ones after it.
02
The 5 criteria
|
Criterion
|
What earns the points
|
Points
|
|---|---|---|
| Official MCP server | The vendor publishes an MCP server itself: hosted on its own domain, published in the official MCP Registry under its name, or documented on its own site. Community-built servers don't count. | 30 |
| Hosted by the vendor | The server runs at a web address you connect to, with nothing to install or keep updated. | 25 |
| Sign-in | Self-serve OAuth, where your AI client signs you in with your own account, scores 20. OAuth through an app you register first, or no sign-in, scores 10. An API key scores 5. | 20 |
| Documented tools | A docs page for the server, and its tools known from the server itself or named in that documentation. | 10 |
| Free to start, pay as you go | From the vendor's own pricing and developer pages: a free plan or trial (4), no sales call (3), no card to start (2), no charge above the base plan (3), and usage that is included or can be capped (3). | 15 |
| Total | 100 |
03
How it's scored
The best server counts. A vendor with several servers takes the score of its best one. Two half-ready servers don't add up to a ready one.
Anything not researched scores nothing, and isn't ranked. A score is provisional while we don't yet know how a server is hosted, how you sign in, or what agent access costs. It can only rise once we do, so provisional vendors are left out of rankings and the quarterly index until then.
The index is frozen each quarter. Each quarter's report keeps every vendor's score as it stood that quarter. Its headline is the share of a fixed panel, the 250 most-visited marketing tools with an official MCP server, chosen at the start of each year, that are agent-ready: a hosted server with OAuth sign-in and documented tools.
Only first-hand evidence. Our own daily checks of the live server, the official MCP Registry, and the vendor's own documentation and pricing pages. Never review sites, directories or blog posts.
Ties share a rank. Vendors ranked in a category with the same score share a place, so a vendor tied with two others above it ranks joint 3rd.
Nobody can pay for a score. Vendors can't pay to be listed, scored, ranked or badged, and that includes the tools Growth Method works with.
04
Who checks this
Stuart Brameld, founder of Growth Method, which builds MartechDB, answers for the index: the methodology, every change to it, and every correction. www.linkedin.com, x.com, www.growthmethod.com
The checks themselves are automated, so every vendor gets the same ones: each listed server is checked every day, and what agent access costs is read from each vendor's own pages and rechecked monthly. Each vendor page says when its server was last checked and how we know it's official.
05
Versions
When the criteria or their points change, the version number changes and the change is listed here, so a score you quote always says which rules it was given under.
|
Version
|
Published
|
What changed
|
|---|---|---|
| v1.1 | 10 Oct 2026 | Same points. Unknown hosting or sign-in now makes a score provisional, as unchecked access terms already did, and provisional scores are left out of rankings and the quarterly index until they're researched. |
| v1.0 | 10 Oct 2026 | First published version: an official MCP server, hosted by the vendor, OAuth sign-in, documented tools and access terms. |
06
Corrections and citing
If a fact on a vendor's page is wrong, use "Suggest a correction" on that page. We check it against the vendor's own pages and the live server, and every correction we make is listed on Corrections.
Quote any score with its version and a link to the vendor's page, or cite the index as: