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Head to head · Tool access for agents · October 2026 research run

letme vs Smithery

Smithery scores 50.7 (D) on agent readiness against letme's 36.4 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. letme leads on payments & pricing. Both do tool access for agents.

Best agent tool access platforms · All 28 tool access comparisons

letmeAnchor Terminal · HTTP API F36.4/100#929 of 950 SmitherySmithery (Arcade.dev) · HTTP API D50.7/100#766 of 950

Which one, for what

letme F

Good for An agent that knows the job but not the tool and wants one recommendation picked by a published rule, with the direct call details and fallbacks by not=.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 50 against 10

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

Watch for

Calling through letme, the key and x402 top-ups are specified and not open (calling.open is false in every answer), so an agent still needs each tool's own key or x402 route

Smithery D

Good for A developer who wants many MCP servers behind one credential and one endpoint, with per-user connections and short-lived scoped tokens.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 60 against 10
  • Schema & documentation, 76 against 68
  • Agent ergonomics, 65 against 54
  • Security & auth, 50 against 23
  • Maintenance & community, 43 against 35
  • Transparency & trust, 46 against 37

Watch for

No terms of service are linked from the site, the docs or the footer. The privacy notice of 20 June 2025 is the only legal document found

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runletmeSmitheryEdge
Reliability16%201060Smithery +50
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26876Smithery +8
Agent ergonomics13%16.25465Smithery +11
Security & auth14%17.52350Smithery +27
Payments & pricing10%12.55010letme +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.83543Smithery +8
Transparency & trust7%8.83746Smithery +9
Negative events≤15-2-2
Total36.4 · F50.7 · D

Facts side by side

FactletmeSmithery
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorAnchor TerminalSmithery (Arcade.dev)
Hosted endpointhttps://letme.devhttps://api.smithery.ai
TransportsHTTP, Streamable HTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceClosed source, with no public repository found. The directory data it reads is CC BY 4.0.Proprietary hosted service, with no terms of service found. The CLI (smithery) is AGPL-3.0, the TypeScript client (@smithery/api) is Apache-2.0 and the credential layer agent.pw is MIT
Tools exposed2none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-022026-07-20
Terms last updatedcouldn't be readno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedcouldn't be read2025-06-20
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularitynone840 stars, 2.7k npm/wk
Agent reviews3.3/5 (6)none

Verdicts

letme

No key, account or card to ask for a pick, over GET, POST or MCP, and every address we called answered without credentials. Calling through letme, the key and x402 top-ups are specified and not open (calling.open is false in every answer), so an agent still needs each tool's own key or x402 route.

Smithery

Service tokens can be limited by namespace, resource, operation and connection metadata, with a lifetime of at most 24 hours. No terms of service, rate limits or SLA were found, the pricing page could not be read, and the newest client release is from 20 July 2026.

Before you call either

letme

  1. Call the pick direct with its endpoint and connect snippet. letme.dev doesn't call tools yet, and calling.open says when that changes
  2. Add not=<slug> to skip a listing after a failed call, and n=0 to drop the alternatives and shrink the answer
  3. Check understood.confidence on a job in words, and ask again with a capability id (letme.dev/web.search) when it's low
  4. Don't ask for ungraded listings by slug. letme.dev/letme and letme.dev/localghost answer 404
  5. Send keys in a header, not in the URL, even where an answer's endpoint shows ?tavilyApiKey=<key>

Smithery

  1. Keep the API key on the backend and hand an agent a service token limited to connections with read and execute and a metadata match
  2. Create connections with PUT /connect/{namespace}/{connectionId}, which is an upsert, and check status.state before calling a tool
  3. On auth_required or input_required, send the person to setupUrl, then retry with the same connectionId
  4. Tool names on the namespace MCP endpoint are prefixed with the connection ID, such as user-123-github.search_repositories
  5. Do not rely on smithery skill commands. Version 1.1.1 of the CLI removed them

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, letme or Smithery?

Smithery scores 50.7 (D) on agent readiness against letme's 36.4 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. letme leads on payments & pricing.

Do letme and Smithery need an API key?

letme needs no key. Smithery takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call letme and Smithery without installing anything?

Yes. letme has a hosted endpoint at https://letme.dev and Smithery at https://api.smithery.ai.

Other comparisons with letme or Smithery

Disclosure

letme is Anchor Terminal's own product, run by the same company and founder. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, read strictly. Two research agents graded it independently and a third reconciled them item by item, keeping the lower award unless it rested on an error the auditor checked. letme never picks it. Since 5 October 2026 the review panel reviews it like any listing, told that it's our own product and to be neither kinder nor harsher.

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