# Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs L402

> L402 has a score of 60.5 (C) against Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)'s 55.3 (C). Both do agent payment protocols. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 37 points. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

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- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-05

L402 has a score of 60.5 (C) against Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)'s 55.3 (C). Both do agent payment protocols. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 37 points.

- Agent Payments Protocol (AP2): grade C, 55.3/100, rank graded, not ranked against tools. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ap2.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ap2.json
- L402: grade C, 60.5/100, rank graded, not ranked against tools. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/l402.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/l402.json

## Which one, for what

Pick Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) for schema & documentation (+9), security & auth (+26), transparency & trust (+6).

Pick L402 for reliability (+24), agent ergonomics (+10), payments & pricing (+37), maintenance & community (+8).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) | L402 | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 31 | 55 | L402 +24 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 65 | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +9 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 51 | 61 | L402 +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 84 | 58 | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +26 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 97 | L402 +37 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 19 | 27 | L402 +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 56 | 50 | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.3 · C** | **60.5 · C** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) | L402 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Payment protocol | Payment protocol |
| Vendor | Google (standardisation moved to the FIDO Alliance) | Lightning Labs |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT (per l402.tech) |
| Tools exposed | none | none |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| MCP registry | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-04-28 | 2026-03-25 |
| Popularity | 3.2k stars | 89 stars |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | 3/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Agent Payments Protocol (AP2).** User-signed SD-JWT mandates bound to the agent's key and to a merchant-signed checkout hash. No production deployment named by Google or found elsewhere.

**L402.** Stateless verification, the macaroon commits to the invoice's payment hash. Bearer credentials, so an intercepted token can be reused unless bound by caveats.

## Before you call either

### Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

1. Read /ap2/specification/ for v0.2; /specification/ is the old v0.1 text
2. Ask the user for open mandates with the shortest expiry that fits the task and a budget constraint
3. Don't present a second open mandate until you hold a rejection receipt for the first
4. Present only the disclosures the verifier needs
5. Install the SDK from git; there is no PyPI package

### L402

1. Run lnget with `--max-cost` and `--max-fee` set
2. Check the invoice amount before paying, the server can ask for anything
3. Accept both `LSAT` and `L402` in challenges, servers still send both
4. Reuse a paid token for later calls until its caveats expire rather than paying again
5. Keep macaroons and preimages out of logs, they're bearer credentials

## Other comparisons with Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) or L402

- [Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) vs Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/acp-vs-ap2.md)
- [Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) vs L402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/acp-vs-l402.md)
- [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-mpp.md)
- [Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) vs x402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ap2-vs-x402.md)
- [L402 vs Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-mpp.md)
- [L402 vs x402](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/l402-vs-x402.md)