Descope Outbound Apps: A Token Vault for AI Agents
Descope Outbound Apps are a token vault inside Descope, an identity platform for developers. When your users connect accounts like Google, Microsoft, Slack or Salesforce, Descope handles the OAuth consent, stores the access and refresh tokens, keeps them fresh, and hands them to your backend, AI agent or MCP server when it needs to call that service. It can also store plain API keys for services that don’t use OAuth, for each user or for a whole customer organization. Descope now offers the same vault for agents under a second name, Connections, inside its Agentic Identity Hub.
The quick answer: Outbound Apps are the part of Descope that lets your software act in other services for your users. For AI agents and MCP servers, Descope now points builders to Connections in its Agentic Identity Hub, which does the same job and sits alongside agent login, MCP server auth and governance. Descope is a well-funded identity company from the founders of Demisto, and it bills this feature by tokens actually used. A disclosure: we make Carly, an AI assistant that connects to thousands of apps for its users, so we work on a related problem from the end-user side. Everything below comes from Descope’s docs, pricing and announcements.
Descope Outbound Apps at a glance
Checked against Descope’s documentation, pricing and press releases on November 12, 2026.
| Descope Outbound Apps | |
|---|---|
| What it is | A vault for third-party OAuth tokens and API keys, per user or per tenant |
| Agent equivalent | Connections in the Descope Agentic Identity Hub |
| Providers | Preconfigured OAuth providers like Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn, plus custom apps and API keys |
| How users connect | Descope Flows (low-code), frontend SDKs or the API |
| Billing | Monthly active tokens, counted only when a token is fetched and used |
| Company | Descope, founded 2022; $88M in seed funding |
| Best for | Teams on Descope whose apps or agents act in users’ third-party accounts |
What Outbound Apps do
Descope’s Outbound Apps documentation describes two jobs:
- Connect to third-party OAuth providers like Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn, and “manage the full OAuth lifecycle, including consent, token refresh, and scope management.”
- Act as a token vault for both OAuth tokens and static API keys, so you can “store, retrieve, and manage secrets for any external service, whether it uses OAuth or not.”
The docs list three main uses:
- Incremental OAuth scopes. Ask for minimal permissions at sign-in, then request more, such as calendar or contacts access, only when a feature needs it. That keeps the first sign-in simple.
- AI agents and MCP servers. Agents and MCP servers that need Google Calendar or Salesforce can retrieve the right user’s or organization’s token whenever they call those APIs.
- Access control. Descope’s policies decide who may retrieve tokens for a given app, so an unauthorized agent or user can’t use a connection “even if the connection has already been established.”
How it works
Setting up an Outbound App has three steps: choose a preconfigured OAuth provider or create a custom app, connect users through Descope Flows, SDKs or the API, and let Descope store and manage the tokens for your backend or agent.
Connecting users. Descope Flows, its visual builder for sign-in journeys, includes ready-made actions for connecting a user, or a whole tenant, to a provider. For services with static API keys, a matching action collects a key from the user and stores it in the vault. Developers who prefer custom screens can use the JavaScript SDKs for web, React and Next.js.
Fetching tokens. When your code needs to call the service, it fetches the token through Descope’s SDKs or API. Descope recommends fetching the latest token for a user, and also supports fetching by specific scopes or at the tenant level. The console shows each consent, including granted scopes, expiry, whether a refresh token exists and the last refresh error.
Outbound Apps and Connections
Descope now has two objects that do the same thing, and its docs are explicit about the split. Outbound Apps and Connections “provide the same capability (a token vault for OAuth tokens and API keys at the user or tenant level, with Descope managing storage and refresh), but they are separate objects in the Console.” The guidance: “Use Outbound Apps for vaulting third-party tokens in a traditional application; use Connections when building agents and MCP servers.”
Connections sit inside the Agentic Identity Hub, Descope’s identity layer for AI agents and MCP servers. There, an agent retrieves its credential “at the moment of use rather than from a config file or environment variable,” so it never holds long-lived secrets.
If you’re building an agent today, Connections are the place to start. If you already use Outbound Apps in a regular app, nothing has to change.
The Agentic Identity Hub
The Agentic Identity Hub bundles Connections with the rest of Descope’s agent identity tools: agent login, authentication for MCP servers, client and workload identity, and policies. In October 2026, Descope announced version 3.0, which extends it from customer-facing agents to the agents a company’s own employees use:
- An approval workflow for new agents, so each one has a documented purpose, an owner and least-privilege access.
- MCP gateway integrations, including the open-source agentgateway project, to apply authentication, authorization and logging even to agents a company didn’t build, such as Claude, Cursor and ChatGPT.
- Stronger client authentication, using keys and certificates instead of static secrets, including workload identity from AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes and GitHub Actions.
- ID-JAG issuance, an SSO-like experience for internal agents reaching MCP servers, with policies checked on every request.
Co-founder and CEO Slavik Markovich said in the announcement that customers kept describing “employees spinning up agents faster than anyone could track them,” and that “internal or external-facing AI systems have the same critical need for delegated access to resources.”
Pricing
Descope’s pricing has a Free Forever plan with 7,500 monthly active users and 2,000 monthly active tokens, paid Pro and Growth plans starting at $249 and $799 a month, and a free year of Pro for qualifying startups. Outbound Apps and Connections are billed by monthly active token: one is counted per user or tenant, per app, when a token is fetched and used at least once in a month. Descope gives examples: one user using one app with the same scopes is one token, and the same user connecting two different accounts on the same app is two.
The company
Descope was founded in 2022 by a team of cybersecurity entrepreneurs who previously founded Demisto, a security automation company acquired by Palo Alto Networks. Slavik Markovich is co-founder and CEO. Descope came out of stealth in February 2023 with a $53 million seed round, and in September 2025 extended it with $35 million from existing investors, including Notable Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners, for $88 million in total funding. Descope says it was named the only Visionary in Gartner’s 2026 Magic Quadrant for customer identity and access management.
How Descope compares
Outbound Apps and Connections compete most directly with Auth0 Token Vault, another token vault inside an established identity platform. Both suit teams that want agent credentials next to their existing login. Dedicated agent platforms like Arcade.dev, Scalekit, Nango and Composio add large catalogs of ready-made tools on top of the vault. Our Composio alternatives guide compares several of them.
Descope is for developers building apps and agents. If you want an assistant that’s already connected to the apps you use, Carly connects to thousands of apps, labels and sorts email across all your Gmail and Outlook accounts by your rules, handles advanced scheduling, and makes and answers calls and texts, from inside ChatGPT or Claude or by text.
Who Descope Outbound Apps suit
Descope Outbound Apps are a good fit if:
- You use Descope for sign-in and need your app to act in users’ Google, Microsoft or Slack accounts.
- You want to request extra OAuth scopes only when a feature needs them.
- You need to store API keys for services that don’t use OAuth, per user or per customer.
- You’re building agents and want the vault next to agent login, MCP auth and governance, in which case use Connections.
Look elsewhere if:
- You want a large catalog of ready-made agent tools rather than only the credential layer.
- You aren’t using Descope and don’t plan to move your sign-in there.
- You’re an end user looking for an assistant, not a developer building one.
FAQ
What are Descope Outbound Apps?
Outbound Apps are a Descope feature that connects your users to third-party OAuth providers and stores their tokens and API keys, refreshing them as needed, so your app, AI agent or MCP server can call those services on their behalf.
What’s the difference between Outbound Apps and Connections?
They provide the same token vault but are separate objects in Descope’s console. Descope recommends Outbound Apps for traditional applications and Connections, in its Agentic Identity Hub, for AI agents and MCP servers.
Can Outbound Apps store API keys?
Yes. Besides OAuth tokens, Outbound Apps can store static API keys for any service, for an individual user or a whole tenant.
How is Descope Outbound Apps priced?
By monthly active token, counted per user or tenant, per app, when a token is fetched and used at least once in a month. Descope also has a Free Forever plan and paid plans from $249 a month.
Who makes Descope?
Descope, founded in 2022 by the team behind Demisto, which Palo Alto Networks acquired. It has raised $88 million in seed funding.
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