# Circle Gateway Nanopayments vs Tempo (slim)

> Tempo scores 76.6 (BB) to Circle Gateway Nanopayments's 67.6 (B) for stablecoin payments. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-tempo.md (~2,350 tokens) · this version ~780 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-tempo.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-tempo
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-09

Tempo scores 76.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Circle Gateway Nanopayments's 67.6 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Circle Gateway Nanopayments leads on transparency & trust. Both do stablecoin payments.

- Circle Gateway Nanopayments: B 67.6, rank #247 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/circle-gateway-nanopayments.min.md
- Tempo: BB 76.6, rank #27 of 950 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/tempo.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 Transparency & trust, 72 against 63. Also No key needed to call it.
- Tempo, 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 56; Schema & documentation, 88 against 80; Security & auth, 70 against 64; Maintenance & community, 88 against 77. Also Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better; Open source; No incidents deducted, where Circle Gateway Nanopayments loses 3 points for them.

| Category | Circle Gateway Nanopayments | Tempo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 56 | 71 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 80 | 88 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 75 | 78 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 64 | 70 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 80 | 80 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 77 | 88 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 72 | 63 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Circle Gateway Nanopayments | Tempo |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Circle | Tempo |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://gateway-api.circle.com` | `https://api.tempo.xyz/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| 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 | MIT OR Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 4 |
| Last release | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-24 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-16 | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-07-31 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes |  |
| Popularity | 17k npm/wk | 1k stars, 209k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.1/5 (8) |