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Head to head · Stablecoin payments · October 2026 research run

ATXP vs Tempo

Tempo scores 76.6 (BB) on agent readiness against ATXP's 42.9 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do stablecoin payments.

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

ATXPCircuit & Chisel, Inc. · HTTP API E42.9/100#887 of 950 TempoTempo · HTTP API BB76.6/100#27 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.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

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

Tempo BB

Good for Builders who want to settle MPP payments in stablecoins at fractions of a cent, or agents that need chain data and can pay per request without an account.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 71 against 13
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 54
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 51
  • Security & auth, 70 against 41
  • Payments & pricing, 80 against 75
  • Maintenance & community, 88 against 33
  • Transparency & trust, 63 against 43

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Open source

Watch for

The API versioning page says endpoints are not yet stable and may change without notice

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runATXPTempoEdge
Reliability16%201371Tempo +58
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25488Tempo +34
Agent ergonomics13%16.25178Tempo +27
Security & auth14%17.54170Tempo +29
Payments & pricing10%12.57580Tempo +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83388Tempo +55
Transparency & trust7%8.84363Tempo +20
Negative events≤1500
Total42.9 · E76.6 · BB

Facts side by side

FactATXPTempo
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorCircuit & Chisel, Inc.Tempo
Hosted endpointhttps://llm.atxp.ai/v1https://api.tempo.xyz/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingPay per usePay per use
x402payer tooling onlyno
LicenceProprietary hosted service under Circuit & Chisel's Terms of Service. The SDK packages and the atxp CLI on GitHub are MITMIT OR Apache-2.0
Tools exposednone4
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-06-022026-09-24
Terms last updated2025-09-03no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-06-172026-07-31
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity6 stars, 499 npm/wk1k stars, 209k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.1/5 (8)

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.

Tempo

api.tempo.xyz accepts MPP on its anonymous endpoints, so an agent can pay per request without an account. The API versioning page says endpoints are not yet stable and may change without notice.

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

Tempo

  1. Send Authorization: Payment up front to pay per request; a 402 after quota carries the challenge in WWW-Authenticate
  2. Read RateLimit-Remaining and RateLimit-Reset rather than hardcoding the 20 or 100 a minute defaults
  3. Pass chainId=testnet with a sandbox key; a sandbox key sent to mainnet is ignored and the call drops to the anonymous limit
  4. Use tempo request --dry-run before paying an MPP endpoint to see the cost
  5. Branch on error.code, never on error.message

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, ATXP or Tempo?

Tempo scores 76.6 (BB) on agent readiness against ATXP's 42.9 (E), and leads in every scored category.

Do ATXP and Tempo need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call ATXP and Tempo without installing anything?

Yes. ATXP has a hosted endpoint at https://llm.atxp.ai/v1 and Tempo at https://api.tempo.xyz/v1.

Are ATXP and Tempo open source?

No open-source release is listed for ATXP. Tempo is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with ATXP or Tempo

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