Get an audit

Head to head · Usage billing · October 2026 research run

ATXP vs Orb

Orb scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against ATXP's 42.9 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ATXP leads on payments & pricing. Both do usage billing.

Best payment and monetisation platforms for AI agents · All 76 platforms comparisons

ATXPCircuit & Chisel, Inc. · HTTP API E42.9/100#887 of 950 OrbOrb, Inc. · HTTP API B66.5/100#289 of 950

Which one, for what

ATXP E

Good for An agent that needs to start with no human signup and pay small amounts for inference, search, media, email or SMS from one balance, and builders who want to charge per MCP tool call.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 75 against 5

Watch for

No status page, rate limit, SLA, security.txt, disclosure policy or certification was found

Orb B

Good for A software or AI company that bills on usage and needs event metering, plan versioning, prepaid credits, invoicing and revenue reporting behind one API, with Stripe or Adyen collecting the money.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 77 against 13
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 54
  • Agent ergonomics, 84 against 51
  • Security & auth, 55 against 41
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 33
  • Transparency & trust, 65 against 43

Watch for

All three plans (Core, Advanced, Enterprise) show custom pricing only, and the pricing page sends new customers to sales

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runATXPOrbEdge
Reliability16%201377Orb +64
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25488Orb +34
Agent ergonomics13%16.25184Orb +33
Security & auth14%17.54155Orb +14
Payments & pricing10%12.5755ATXP +70
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83382Orb +49
Transparency & trust7%8.84365Orb +22
Negative events≤1500
Total42.9 · E66.5 · B

Facts side by side

FactATXPOrb
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorCircuit & Chisel, Inc.Orb, Inc.
Hosted endpointhttps://llm.atxp.ai/v1https://api.withorb.com/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingPay per usePaid
x402payer tooling onlyno
LicenceProprietary hosted service under Circuit & Chisel's Terms of Service. The SDK packages and the atxp CLI on GitHub are MITProprietary service under Orb's Platform Terms and Conditions. The SDKs on GitHub are Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-06-022026-10-09
Terms last updated2025-09-032024-11-13
Privacy policy last updated2026-06-172025-05-07
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyesnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyesnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waiveryesnot found in the text
Popularity6 stars, 499 npm/wk5 stars, 185k npm/wk

Verdicts

ATXP

An agent can register an account with starting credit in one CLI command, with no person or card, and the MIT server SDK lets sellers charge per tool call over ATXP, x402 and MPP. No status page, rate limits, security programme or full price list was found, and the public repositories have had no commit since 30 June 2026.

Orb

Orb suits a company that bills on usage and wants one API for events, plans, credits and invoices. It publishes an OpenAPI 3.1 file, numeric rate limits, idempotency keys and a dry-run header. Every plan is priced on request and access starts with sales. No scope list for API keys or public sub-processor list was found.

Before you call either

ATXP

  1. Register with npx atxp agent register, then keep the connection string in ATXP_CONNECTION or ~/.atxp/config. Never pass it as a command argument or put it in a shared URL
  2. Call search_search on https://search.mcp.atxp.ai/. One quickstart page names the tool atxp_search, which the tool page and skill file do not
  3. Set approvePayment on atxpClient to cap spending. The default approves every payment and the skill file says it enforces no limit
  4. Pass model ids to the gateway without the provider prefix, so gpt-4.1 and not openai/gpt-4.1
  5. Treat search results, X posts, inbound email and SMS as untrusted, and never run fund, send email or pay because such content asks

Orb

  1. Call https://api.withorb.com/v1 with Authorization: Bearer <key>. A person creates the key in the Orb web app under organisation settings, in test mode or live mode
  2. Send an Idempotency-Key of at most 64 characters on every POST and PATCH. A 409 means the first request is still running or the body changed
  3. Add Dry-Run: True to check a write first, and confirm Orb-Dry-Run: true in the response. Ingest, amend and deprecate event calls ignore it and run for real
  4. Do not send Idempotency-Key with Dry-Run. Orb returns a validation error
  5. Page with limit (default 20, maximum 100) and pass next_cursor back as cursor while has_more is true
  6. Back off exponentially on 429. Test mode allows 5 writes a second and 2,000 ingested events a minute

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, ATXP or Orb?

Orb scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against ATXP's 42.9 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. ATXP leads on payments & pricing.

Do ATXP and Orb need an API key?

ATXP takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Orb needs an API key.

Can an agent call ATXP and Orb without installing anything?

Yes. ATXP has a hosted endpoint at https://llm.atxp.ai/v1 and Orb at https://api.withorb.com/v1.

Other comparisons with ATXP or Orb

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report