# Circle Gateway Nanopayments vs Payman Genie MCP

> Circle Gateway Nanopayments scores 67.6 (B) to Payman Genie MCP's 52.5 (D) for x402 payments. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-payman.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
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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: 2026-10-09

Circle Gateway Nanopayments scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against Payman Genie MCP's 52.5 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Payman Genie MCP leads on security & auth. Both do x402 payments.

- Circle Gateway Nanopayments: grade B, 67.6/100, rank #247 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/circle-gateway-nanopayments.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/circle-gateway-nanopayments.json
- Payman Genie MCP: grade D, 52.5/100, rank #735 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/payman.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/payman.json
- Best payment and monetisation platforms for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/payment-platforms/index.md
- All 76 platforms comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/payment-platforms/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Circle Gateway Nanopayments (B)

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:
- Reliability, 56 against 25
- Schema & documentation, 80 against 56
- Agent ergonomics, 75 against 68
- Payments & pricing, 80 against 35
- Maintenance & community, 77 against 60
- Transparency & trust, 72 against 43

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it

Watch for: No rate limit, 429 guidance or SLA was found for the Gateway API in the reviewed documentation

### Payman Genie MCP (D)

Good for: A person or small business who wants an assistant to pay bills, issue one-time cards or pay x402 APIs within hard limits.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 80 against 64

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Free to start without a card
- No incidents deducted, where Circle Gateway Nanopayments loses 3 points for them

Watch for: No published pricing, status page, rate limits or changelog


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Circle Gateway Nanopayments | Payman Genie MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 56 | 25 | Circle Gateway Nanopayments +31 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 80 | 56 | Circle Gateway Nanopayments +24 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 68 | Circle Gateway Nanopayments +7 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 64 | 80 | Payman Genie MCP +16 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 80 | 35 | Circle Gateway Nanopayments +45 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 60 | Circle Gateway Nanopayments +17 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 72 | 43 | Circle Gateway Nanopayments +29 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **67.6 · B** | **52.5 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Circle Gateway Nanopayments | Payman Genie MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Circle | Payman AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://gateway-api.circle.com` | `https://genie.paymanai.com/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP | Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | None | OAuth |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Paid |
| x402 | payer tooling only | payer tooling only |
| 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 | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 5 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-19 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-29 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-09-29 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | 17k npm/wk | 0 stars, 33 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Circle Gateway Nanopayments.** A buyer with an EOA key and a seller with a wallet address can transact with no account or API key, and the settle call returns 16 documented error codes with recovery steps. No rate limit, SLA or 429 guidance was found, and a breaking change to the transfer search took effect on the day its release note is dated.

**Payman Genie MCP.** OAuth 2.1 with PKCE, two scopes, one-hour access tokens and refresh tokens rotated on every use and revoked on logout. No published pricing, status page, rate limits or changelog.

## Before you call either

### Circle Gateway Nanopayments

1. Deposit on the chain you will pay from. `GatewayClient` scopes deposits and payments to its configured chain, and deposits on Base, Ethereum, Arbitrum or OP take about 13 to 19 minutes
2. Set `validBefore` at least 7 days ahead when signing by hand. The SDK uses 604900 seconds
3. Register `onBeforePaymentCreation` and abort above a cap. `pay(url)` signs whatever amount the seller's 402 response asks for
4. Call `settle` without a prior `verify`. Balance and nonce checks happen only at settle time
5. Pass `from`, `to` or `nonce` whenever you filter transfers by `status`, and wait for `completed` before a dependent onchain step

### Payman Genie MCP

1. Pass the person's request to `ask_genie` in their own words; don't pick accounts or fill payment fields
2. On `needs_approval`, stop and tell the person; approval happens in their Genie account
3. Retry only after `NOTHING_RAN` or `BUSY`, never after `OUTCOME_UNKNOWN`
4. Treat `done` as acted, not settled; check the activity history before confirming a payment
5. Sign-ins from bridge 0.3.x lack `genie:self`; log out and sign in again to use the self-service tools

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Circle Gateway Nanopayments or Payman Genie MCP?

Circle Gateway Nanopayments scores 67.6 (B) on agent readiness against Payman Genie MCP's 52.5 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Payman Genie MCP leads on security & auth.

### Do Circle Gateway Nanopayments and Payman Genie MCP need an API key?

Circle Gateway Nanopayments needs no key. Payman Genie MCP uses an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Circle Gateway Nanopayments and Payman Genie MCP without installing anything?

Yes. Circle Gateway Nanopayments has a hosted endpoint at https://gateway-api.circle.com and Payman Genie MCP at https://genie.paymanai.com/mcp.


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-payman.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-payman.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "circle-gateway-nanopayments", "b": "payman"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare circle-gateway-nanopayments payman`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/circle-gateway-nanopayments.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/payman.json

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