# Circle Gateway Nanopayments vs Crossmint API + Docs MCP (slim)

> Circle Gateway Nanopayments and Crossmint API + Docs MCP score within a point of each other for x402 payments, 67.6 and 67.1 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-crossmint.md (~2,550 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-crossmint.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-crossmint
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Circle Gateway Nanopayments and Crossmint API + Docs MCP score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 67.6 (B) and 67.1 (B). Crossmint API + Docs MCP leads on security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do x402 payments.

- Circle Gateway Nanopayments: B 67.6, rank #247 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/circle-gateway-nanopayments.min.md
- Crossmint API + Docs MCP: B 67.1, rank #260 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/crossmint.min.md
- Circle Gateway Nanopayments, good for Sellers charging fractions of a cent per API call and agents making many small payments from one prefunded balance on EVM chains. Ahead on Schema & documentation, 80 against 71; Payments & pricing, 80 against 50. Also No key needed to call it.
- Crossmint API + Docs MCP, good for Products that let agents spend, especially where a user wants a capped card or a capped stablecoin wallet for an agent, or an agent that buys from ordinary merchant sites. Ahead on Security & auth, 73 against 64; Maintenance & community, 85 against 77; Transparency & trust, 80 against 72. Also No incidents deducted, where Circle Gateway Nanopayments loses 3 points for them.

| Category | Circle Gateway Nanopayments | Crossmint API + Docs MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 56 | 53 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 80 | 71 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 75 | 71 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 64 | 73 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 80 | 50 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 77 | 85 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 72 | 80 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Circle Gateway Nanopayments | Crossmint API + Docs MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Circle | Crossmint |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://gateway-api.circle.com` | `https://www.crossmint.com/api` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under the Circle Developer Terms. The `@circle-fin/x402-batching` SDK on npm and the Gateway contracts on GitHub are Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 1 |
| Last release | 2026-09-16 | 2026-10-01 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-16 | 2026-07-01 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-09-21 |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 17k npm/wk | 52 stars, 40k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |