Choose Gmail API if
- Your agent is a feature inside a user's Gmail (add-on, sidebar, pocket-assistant).
- The end user explicitly wants the agent reading and writing their personal mail.
- You need access to Google-specific features (confidential mode, Workspace labels shared with the user).
Choose Loomal if
- The agent should act on its own behalf, not as a user.
- You don't want to hold OAuth tokens for every customer's Gmail account.
- Credentials and 2FA for downstream services should live with the agent.
- You want per-agent revocation that doesn't also log a user out of their email.
Feature-by-feature
| Feature | Loomal | Gmail API | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity model | Agent owns mailbox | Uses human's account | |
| OAuth setup | None (API key only) | Full OAuth consent flow per user | |
| Token refresh | Not applicable | Refresh tokens, revocation handling | |
| Scopes approval | One identity, one key | User must approve mail scopes | |
| Access to Gmail features | Standard SMTP + labels | Full Gmail feature set | |
| Vault | Built in | None | |
| TOTP | Built in | None | |
| Data residency | Per-plan options | Google Cloud regions | |
| MCP server | First-party | Not applicable | |
| Delegation / scoped revoke | Native cascading | Per-app scope revoke |
The uncomfortable question
Why does your AI agent need to be inside a human's Gmail? For some products there's a genuine answer — an email assistant that sorts your personal inbox, for example. For most agentic workloads the honest answer is 'it doesn't, we just don't know how else to give it an email address.' Loomal exists to make that alternative concrete.
Once the agent has its own mailbox at agent@loomal.ai (or your custom domain), every downstream concern shrinks. No OAuth flow to maintain, no refresh tokens to rotate, no Google verification review for sensitive scopes, no per-user privacy exposure if your agent code has a bug.
The OAuth maintenance burden
Shipping a Gmail-integrated agent means signing up for an ongoing relationship with Google's auth surface. Verification reviews take weeks and must be repeated when scopes change. Refresh tokens expire unpredictably and require re-consent from each user. Revoked grants fail silently in ways that are hard to distinguish from transient errors.
None of that is unique to Loomal; it's the price of reaching into someone else's mailbox. Moving the agent to its own inbox eliminates the whole surface. For agents that don't genuinely need to read a specific human's mail, it's a large simplification.
FAQ
Can Loomal use a custom domain that looks like it's from my company?
Yes. Configure SPF/DKIM/DMARC for your domain and every identity can send as agent@yourcompany.com or similar. Recipients see your brand, not loomal.ai.
What if I need to see an email that lives in a user's Gmail?
Gmail API is the correct tool for that. Loomal doesn't try to be a Gmail client — we give agents their own mailbox, which is a different problem.
Can I forward from Gmail into Loomal?
Yes — set a Gmail forwarding rule to your agent's Loomal address. The agent then reads it like any other mail. This is a common hybrid pattern for 'pull personal mail into an agent workflow' cases.
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Last updated: 2026-04-15