Apostra compared with platform MCPs and direct seller APIs

Use a platform’s own MCP when your work lives on that one platform, and use a seller’s API directly when you want full control of one integration. Use Apostra when one agent or application has to work across several sellers and needs a shared record of what it asked for, bought and received, with approvals in between. These are different jobs. This page sets out what each option covers so you can choose. It was checked against each vendor’s own documentation and announcements on 13 November 2026.

The comparison

	Apostra V3 MCP and API	A platform’s own MCP	A seller’s API or AdCP sales agent, called directly
Reach	Sellers connected through Apostra: Apostra storefronts, AdCP sales agents and the ad platforms on the compatibility pages	One platform	One seller per integration
What you get	The products and operations each connected platform offers through Apostra. The compatibility pages list what is available, partial or not offered	That platform’s own operations. Meta’s server groups its tools into reporting, ad creation and management, catalogs, signals and datasets, troubleshooting, A/B tests and conversion lift studies, and activity logs	Whatever that seller’s API offers
Buying across sellers	Briefs to sellers that answer them, with proposals to compare. Platform sellers are browsed as wholesale products	Not offered by a single-platform server	You build and run it
Records	Saved advertiser, campaign, creative and media-buy records with revisions and idempotency keys, shared across sellers	The platform’s own records	Yours to design
Approvals	Two-step launch bound to a campaign revision, read-only advertiser grants, administrator approval of billing changes	The platform’s own permissions. Google’s open-source server asks for a dry run and a checksum before it applies a write	Yours to build
Where it runs	Hosted at `https://api.apostra.com/mcp/v3`, with a V3 HTTP API and SDKs	Meta hosts its server at `https://mcp.facebook.com/ads`. Amazon’s is in open beta for partners with active API credentials. Google’s runs locally or on infrastructure you run	Wherever your code runs
Credentials	OAuth for MCP clients, API keys or M2M applications for the HTTP API	The platform’s	One per seller
Reporting	Delivery across sellers with a finality label on every figure. Buyer reporting is day-grain	The platform’s own reporting. Meta lists reporting among its tool groups, and Google’s server runs GAQL queries	The seller’s

Choose by job

One platform, its full feature set. Use that platform’s own MCP or API. Apostra’s connection covers the products on each compatibility page, with the gaps listed there, and a platform may offer its own features before Apostra does.
One seller, tight control. Call its API, or its AdCP sales agent, directly. AdCP is open, and you do not need Apostra to speak it. See Building on Apostra or on AdCP directly.
Several sellers, one agent. Apostra. You skip a separate buying adapter per seller, and the agent reads one set of tools and one set of records.
Both. An agent can use Apostra for cross-seller discovery and buying and a platform’s own MCP for a feature Apostra does not expose.

What Apostra does not do

It does not replace a platform’s own interface for every native feature. Read the compatibility page for each platform before you commit.
It does not host your agent. You own scheduling, retries and durable workflow state.
Platform sellers sell wholesale only, so a brief does not return proposals from them.
It does not generate creative. It saves and attaches a finished one.
It cannot buy from a seller that is not connected through Apostra.

The complete list is in Capability limits.

When not to use Apostra

Your agent works on one platform and the platform’s MCP covers the operations you need.
You need a platform-native feature Apostra’s connection lists as not offered.
You want no intermediary between your code and one seller.

Next step

To try Apostra next to a platform MCP, install the developer plugin and have your agent call get_status:

/plugin marketplace add https://github.com/apostra-public/apostra.git
/plugin install apostra-developer@apostra

For Codex, use codex plugin marketplace add https://github.com/apostra-public/apostra.git and codex plugin add apostra-developer@apostra. Then follow Connect in five minutes. Pricing is in Plan & Billing.

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