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Head to head · Usage billing · October 2026 research run

Lago vs Tempo

Tempo scores 76.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Lago's 65.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lago leads on reliability. Both do usage billing.

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

LagoGet Lago Corp. · HTTP API B65.7/100#311 of 950 TempoTempo · HTTP API BB76.6/100#27 of 950

Which one, for what

Lago B

Good for A team that wants usage metering, plans, wallets and invoicing under its own control and can run PostgreSQL and Redis.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 86 against 71

Watch for

The free edition has one organisation API key with full access. Creating more keys needs a Premium licence and per-resource permissions need an enterprise add-on

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

  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 71
  • Security & auth, 70 against 37
  • Payments & pricing, 80 against 50

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • No incidents deducted, where Lago loses 3 points for them

Watch for

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

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLagoTempoEdge
Reliability16%208671Lago +15
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28788Tempo +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.27178Tempo +7
Security & auth14%17.53770Tempo +33
Payments & pricing10%12.55080Tempo +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.89188Lago +3
Transparency & trust7%8.85963Tempo +4
Negative events≤15-30
Total65.7 · B76.6 · BB

Facts side by side

FactLagoTempo
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorGet Lago Corp.Tempo
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://api.tempo.xyz/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumPay per use
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0 (platform). The MCP server and agent SDKs are MIT. Premium capabilities and Lago Cloud are commercialMIT OR Apache-2.0
Tools exposednone4
Read-only variant documentedyesno
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-072026-09-24
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-07-31
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity11k stars, 48k npm/wk1k stars, 209k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.1/5 (8)

Verdicts

Lago

Lago's open-source edition runs usage metering, plans, wallets and invoicing on the owner's servers at no charge, with an OpenAPI 3.1 file of 217 operations and releases about every two weeks. The free edition has one unscoped API key and no audit logs, and Lago's llms.txt understates what its MCP server can change.

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

Lago

  1. Call <your Lago API origin>/api/v1 with Authorization: Bearer <key>. On Lago Cloud the hosts are api.getlago.com and api.eu.getlago.com
  2. Send every usage event with a deterministic transaction_id and an explicit timestamp, and resend the same payload on retry. On the ClickHouse event store a changed timestamp is billed again
  3. Expect 422 value_already_exist for a repeated event on the Postgres event store. Treat it as success for a retry
  4. Page with page and per_page and read meta.next_page and meta.total_count. The default page size is 100 in most cases
  5. Treat the free edition's API key as full access. It can void invoices and terminate subscriptions, so keep it out of prompts and ask a person before financial changes
  6. Before giving an assistant the MCP server, note that it includes delete_invoice, void_invoice, delete_plan and create_payment and sets no read-only annotations

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, Lago or Tempo?

Tempo scores 76.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Lago's 65.7 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Lago leads on reliability.

Do Lago and Tempo need an API key?

Lago needs an API key. Tempo takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Lago and Tempo without installing anything?

No hosted endpoint is listed for Lago. Tempo has a hosted endpoint at https://api.tempo.xyz/v1.

Are Lago and Tempo open source?

Yes. Lago is open source (AGPL-3.0 (platform). The MCP server and agent SDKs are MIT. Premium capabilities and Lago Cloud are commercial). Tempo is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

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