# Circle Gateway Nanopayments vs Skyfire API + MCP (slim)

> Circle Gateway Nanopayments scores 67.6 (B) to Skyfire's 40.3 (E) for stablecoin payments. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-skyfire.md (~2,400 tokens) · this version ~730 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-skyfire.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-skyfire
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.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 Skyfire API + MCP's 40.3 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do stablecoin payments.

- Circle Gateway Nanopayments: B 67.6, rank #247 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/circle-gateway-nanopayments.min.md
- Skyfire API + MCP: E 40.3, rank #911 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/skyfire.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 Reliability, 56 against 19; Schema & documentation, 80 against 59; Agent ergonomics, 75 against 61; Security & auth, 64 against 41; Payments & pricing, 80 against 20; Maintenance & community, 77 against 31; Transparency & trust, 72 against 53. Also No key needed to call it.
- Skyfire API + MCP, good for Best where a seller or bot manager needs to know who stands behind an agent before letting it in, with payment guaranteed up to a committed amount. Also No incidents deducted, where Circle Gateway Nanopayments loses 3 points for them.

| Category | Circle Gateway Nanopayments | Skyfire API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 56 | 19 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 80 | 59 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 75 | 61 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 64 | 41 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 80 | 20 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 77 | 31 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 72 | 53 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Circle Gateway Nanopayments | Skyfire API + MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Circle | Skyfire |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://gateway-api.circle.com` | `https://api.skyfire.xyz` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | payer tooling only | no |
| 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 | none |
| Tools exposed | none | 4 |
| Last release | 2026-09-16 | 2026-08-04 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-16 | 2025-06-25 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2025-06-25 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 17k npm/wk | 16 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 2/5 (2) |