Vessa vs Standards

Standards starts at $40 a month for unlimited published guidelines, two seats and custom domains, plus machine-readable brand context through standards.md, an MCP server or their API, gated behind Pro and Enterprise. Vessa is €29 once per published brand with no subscription, and its MCP connection is on the free tier: your AI reads the real palette and type, and it writes too, filling sections and publishing while you review in the editor. Every guideline also serves a brand.json and an llms.txt at its own URL, no key to request, and the motion is in there: real easing curves, duration bands, code your developer can paste.

Updated August 2026. Standards' plans, examples and AI access were checked on their site on 4 August 2026.

Updated August 2026. Standards' plans, examples and AI access were checked on their site on 4 August 2026.

Where Standards is the better buy

Standards is the best-built product in the indie half of this category, and on several counts it is ahead of Vessa rather than merely different.

Programmatic access for teams. Both products speak MCP now, and both authenticate with OAuth. Standards has done it longer and adds a REST API with role-based access, so a company stack can query the brand and respect who is allowed to see what. Vessa's connection is MCP only and owner only. If the client needs an API their backend calls, or permissions per viewer, Standards is the one that does that today.

Volume, again. Pro is unlimited published guidelines from $40 a month. Vessa is €29 per brand. If you publish more than about a dozen guidelines a year, the subscription is the cheaper line and it isn't close.

Guidelines behind a door. Password-restricted pages, domain-verified access and viewer SSO through Google, Microsoft or SAML. Vessa's drafts are unlisted and kept out of search, but a published Vessa page is a public page. Password protection is on the list, not in the product.

More than one language. Standards localizes on Pro. Vessa is one language per guideline, and for a client operating across markets that is a hard stop rather than an inconvenience.

The different bet each one makes

Standards bets that the guideline is a data source. One document, read by people through the web page and by machines through standards.md, MCP and the API. That's a genuinely good bet, it's ahead of most of this category, and if your client's problem is that nobody's tools know the brand exists, Standards already solves it.

Vessa bets that most guidelines are a handover. You finish the identity, you hand over one link, and the page has to be good enough that people actually open it. So the money is a one-time fee per brand instead of rent, and the craft budget went into the page itself: the moodboard that reflows when you open an image, colors that copy on click, a type tester running on the client's own face, and a motion section with real easing curves and code your developer can paste.

The two bets meet at machine-readability, and both have shipped it. Standards prices theirs into Pro and puts the agent-ready API on Enterprise. Vessa puts its MCP connection on the free tier, and it goes both ways: Claude, Claude Code or Cursor reads the real palette and type, and it also writes, filling sections and publishing while you review in the editor. Every published guideline serves a brand.json and an llms.txt with no key to request, and Vessa's carries the motion, easing curves, duration bands and stagger, which nothing else in this category describes in a form a machine can read.

Who should pick which

Pick Standards if you publish guidelines often enough that a flat subscription beats per-brand pricing, if you need an MCP server or an authenticated API rather than a public file, if the guideline has to stay behind a password or an SSO wall, or if it has to exist in more than one language.

Pick Vessa if you're a designer or a small studio handing over identities one at a time, you want the guideline to be the best-looking thing in the project rather than the most administrative, and you'd rather pay once per brand than carry a subscription between clients. And pick it if your identity moves, because that's the part nobody else documents.