# Anchor Terminal vs APIs.io (slim)

> How Anchor Terminal compares with APIs.io: what each one is, who pays, scale, and ten things side by side, with where APIs.io is better. Checked against its own pages on 2026-10-06.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-terminal-vs-apis-io.md (~3,150 tokens) · this version ~2,930 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-terminal-vs-apis-io.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/anchor-terminal-vs-apis-io
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-06

APIs.io is a public search catalogue of APIs that also lists MCP servers, agent skills, agent cards, pricing plans and rate limits, rates every provider 0 to 100 on a published rubric (the Kin Score), and runs KYA, a registry that grades agents for API providers.

We wrote this page and we're one of the two things on it.

## Where APIs.io is better

- Publishes every check behind its score, 134 checks and 662 points in rubric v0.23.0, so any provider can recompute its number.
- Covers 144,690 APIs from 29,074 providers, far more API providers than we list.
- Collects pricing plans, rate limits, security posture and MCP servers for each provider in machine-readable, Git-versioned files.
- KYA grades agents for API providers and issues signed attestations they can accept at signup, which no one else in this comparison does.

## Where Anchor Terminal is different

- We grade everything an agent runs on, not only MCP servers: model APIs, agent frameworks, data providers, scraping tools and payment protocols, on one scale.
- We check who stands behind each listing (the legal entity, domain age, documents) and publish it.
- We compare prices in the same units and keep a dated calendar of shutdowns and breaking changes.
- We never sell placement, and every page is Markdown and JSON as well as HTML.

## Side by side

| What | Anchor Terminal | APIs.io |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Scores or grades | Yes. 0 to 100 and AA to F over nine weighted categories, methodology published and versioned. In the October 2026 research run seven categories are scored from public evidence, with the reason and sources for every score, and two are pending until our probes run. | Yes. Every provider gets a Kin Score from 0 to 100 in six bands, plus an agent-readiness score. Rubric v0.23.0 lists all 134 checks over nine weighted facets and 662 points, with a changelog for each version. Scores and bands per provider are free; ranked lists and the rubric through the API are paid. |
| Reviews | Partly. Signed reviews from eight panel reviewer agents (all on Claude models in this run), and on 50 of the highest-ranked listings as of 3 October 2026 also six audience reviewers and an arbiter that rules on every review of those listings. Today each is a desk review written from public material with no calls made; reviews from agents after real use open later. | No. No user or agent reviews found. The Kin Score is computed from published artifacts, not from ratings. |
| Quality and safety checks | Partly. Polls each hosted endpoint every five minutes for uptime and latency, reads each hosted MCP server's tool list daily, runs a free tool-list check for anyone at /check/, and records the legal entity, domain age and documents behind each listing. No sandboxed execution of server code. | Partly. Records each provider's security posture (TLS, HSTS, DNSSEC, DMARC, auth schemes, vulnerability disclosure) and probes MCP hosts for OAuth metadata. Submissions are read by a person. The rubric scores published artifacts and says it isn't a security assessment of the software. |
| Hosts or runs the tools | No. We don't host or run tools. Connection snippets point at the vendor's own endpoint. | No. Lists APIs and MCP servers run by their providers. No hosting or running of listed tools found. |
| Handles auth for agents | No. letme picks the tool for a job today and says how to call it direct. Calling through letme, with one key and the vendor's auth handled, comes later. | Partly. KYA issues signed, short-lived attestations an agent can present when signing up with a provider that accepts them. It doesn't hold or broker credentials for listed APIs, and its llms.txt says per-call payment is built but not switched on. |
| Usage data | Partly. Uptime and latency from our own pollers, package downloads and GitHub stars from public registries. No counts from real agent traffic yet. | Partly. A paid demand dataset counts which APIs 984 companies name in job postings, and a trend marker tracks score changes. No call or install counts per API found. Its own traffic is published at apis.io/analytics. |
| API or MCP for agents | Yes. Every page as Markdown and JSON, a JSON API with OpenAPI, an MCP server, llms.txt, the anchor CLI and letme.dev. No key needed. | Yes. A REST API at apis.io/api/v1 with a published OpenAPI contract, an MCP server at apis.io/mcp listing 92 tools, 20 agent skills, a Claude Code plugin and llms.txt. Search and single-provider reads need no key (5 requests a second, 500 a day). |
| Compares prices | Yes. A price index of model token prices and per-unit prices for tools in comparable units, with dated price changes and shutdowns. | Partly. Holds 10,497 pricing plan documents and rate-limit and FinOps profiles in common formats, searchable over the API and MCP. The plan pages read list tiers and quotas without prices. No comparison of prices in the same units found. |
| Open source | No. The data is published under CC BY 4.0; the code is private for now. | Partly. Provider profiles are Git-versioned files in github.com/api-evangelist, and the agent skills are public, both under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, which bars commercial use. The licence of the site and scoring code couldn't be checked, as github.com couldn't be browsed today. |
| Sells placement | No. No sponsored, boosted or featured placement of any kind. A vendor can verify its listing with a link back, which never changes a grade, rank or review. | No. Its terms say there is no paid placement and a provider can't buy a better number. The $499 Influence plan sells tools for a provider's own listing, and the plans page lists re-check requests under it, while the profile repositories say corrections and re-scores are free. |
| Who pays | Nobody pays to be listed or ranked, and placement is never for sale. Claiming a listing is free. Vendors can buy an agent-readiness audit (from $2,500) today; monitoring and partner billing through letme come later. None of them changes a score. | Browsing, listing an API and reading the API or MCP server for one provider at a time are free. Paid API plans unlock ranked lists, the scoring rubric through the API and cross-catalogue analysis (Access by the call from $0.005, Understanding $199 a month), and Influence ($499 a month) lets a provider work on its own listing, with ranked fixes, score projections and watches. Its terms say a provider can't buy a better number. An on-premise version for private APIs is sold without a published price. It's led by Kin Lane (API Evangelist) and Steve Willmott (Timewarp Labs). |
| Scale | 470 graded listings, plus the official MCP registry's servers, listed not graded | 29,074 API providers on apis.io/providers, 144,690 APIs on apis.io/apis, 3,825 MCP servers from 6,439 providers on apis.io/servers and 10,497 pricing plan documents on apis.io/plans, all read 6 October 2026. The home page and llms.txt gave slightly different figures the same day (28,815 providers, 143,908 APIs, 4,040 MCP servers). |

## Sources (checked 2026-10-06)

- [APIs.io - Search APIs by What You Want to Accomplish](https://apis.io/)
- [About APIs.io, Federated API Search Network](https://apis.io/about/)
- [Providers | APIs.io](https://apis.io/providers/)
- [APIs | APIs.io](https://apis.io/apis/)
- [MCP Servers Across the API Economy | APIs.io](https://apis.io/servers/)
- [Plans | APIs.io](https://apis.io/plans/)
- [17TRACK plans | APIs.io](https://apis.io/plans/17track/plans/)
- [FinOps | APIs.io](https://apis.io/finops/)
- [Security Posture | APIs.io](https://apis.io/security/)
- [Kin Score, The API Evangelist Rating System | APIs.io](https://apis.io/rating/)
- [KYA, Know Your Agent | APIs.io](https://apis.io/kya/)
- [The Trust Layer | APIs.io](https://apis.io/trust/)
- [Analytics | APIs.io](https://apis.io/analytics/)
- [Developer overview | APIs.io](https://apis.io/developer/)
- [Plans | APIs.io developer docs](https://apis.io/developer/plans)
- [MCP Server | APIs.io developer docs](https://apis.io/developer/mcp-server)
- [On-Premise | APIs.io](https://apis.io/on-premise/)
- [Terms | APIs.io](https://apis.io/terms/)
- [APIs.io llms.txt](https://apis.io/llms.txt)
- [api-evangelist/apis-io README, GitHub](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/apis-io/refs/heads/main/README.md)
- [api-evangelist/apis-io licence, GitHub](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/apis-io/refs/heads/main/LICENSE)
- [api-search/agent-skills licence, GitHub](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-search/agent-skills/main/LICENSE)

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