Apply direct or via the agent?

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A recruitment consultant contacted me via LinkedIn wanting to know if I'd be interested in a role. (He'd contacted me once before about a role that was below my pay grade, and said he would keep me in mind if he saw something more suitable). He wanted a phonecall but, instead, I asked him for the job description, which he sent. I then found the role is being advertised publicly online. It's a role I am well qualified for and would like, but now I need to decide whether to apply direct or via the agent. The agent says they will be able to give me "insights" but they clearly don't have any exclusivity on the role and I have an underlying worry that they may not have any remit from the hiring org at all - they could have just picked up the advert online and be planning to make a pitch. How do I navigate this? My instinct is that the agent just adds an extra layer of complication, but I don't want to piss them off as they did point me to the advert.

To avoid drip feeding, I directly applied for a similar role at the same org last year but fluffed the interview - I made some "notes for next time", which will hopefully help if I apply again.

Is it a role that offers you the opportunity for an informal chat with a contact at the actual organisation? That's the route I would go. I have known good third party recruiters and bad ones - the bad ones say anything to get you to apply so that they can tick their own boxes - the good ones work hard to find you something that fits you. Are you already an active job searcher with his agency? Because there is that whole process to properly get you on their books too...

As a recruiter please give the recruitment agent a chance. He has reached out to you and it would be highly unlikely he has picked up the job without having a relationship with the client. We do have valuable insights from hiring managers and genuinely can really help with interview prep and insights. We can often also achieve an interview for candidates by highlighting key achievements which might not be evident on a cv and also by saying we have spoken to this candidate and highly recommend them for interview due to xyz reason. We will always ask for a call as that’s our job to qualify you to ensure that you’re a genuinely good match for the role and if not for this role so we can keep you in mind for future roles as this recruiter has indeed done.
our job is actually to fill vacancies but at the same time most recruiters genuinely do also want to help candidates secure a new role. This recruiter has taken a leap of faith by sharing the job description with you when they needn’t have, so do give them the chance.

If you have a choice, apply direct. I once lost out on a job that a business had advertised in the local paper because I hadn't seen their ad and had gone via an agency who had seen it, and they sent my cv to the company.

The chap who interviewed me hadn't been told that my cv had been forwarded to them by the agency, and at the end of the interview when we chatted about how I'd learned of the job and he realised the agency had sent me, he said he wanted to offer me the job but as they had to pay the agency fees he couldn't pay me the salary I needed because their fee would have to come out of the budget they'd set aside for the role. So that was that.

Thanks all. I did have a chat with the agent. I asked him directly if he had a mandate from the employer to recruit for the role, and got a waffly answer, so I contacted the recruitment team to check if they were using agencies and they said they weren't. So I applied direct.