# letme vs Smithery

> Smithery scores 50.7 (D) to letme's 36.4 (F) for tool access for agents. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/letme-vs-smithery
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/letme-vs-smithery.md (~2,250 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/letme-vs-smithery.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/letme-vs-smithery.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- 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

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.

- letme: grade F, 36.4/100, rank #929 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/letme.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/letme.json
- Smithery: grade D, 50.7/100, rank #766 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/smithery.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/smithery.json
- Best agent tool access platforms: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/aggregator/index.md
- All 28 tool access comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aggregator/index.md

## 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

| Category | Weight | letme | Smithery | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 10 | 60 | Smithery +50 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 68 | 76 | Smithery +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 54 | 65 | Smithery +11 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 23 | 50 | Smithery +27 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 50 | 10 | letme +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 35 | 43 | Smithery +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 37 | 46 | Smithery +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **36.4 · F** | **50.7 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | letme | Smithery |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Anchor Terminal | Smithery (Arcade.dev) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://letme.dev` | `https://api.smithery.ai` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Closed 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 exposed | 2 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-02 | 2026-07-20 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | 2025-06-20 |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read |  |
| Popularity | none | 840 stars, 2.7k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (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.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with letme or Smithery

- [Composio (API + MCP) vs Smithery](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/composio-rube-vs-smithery.md)
- [Merge Agent Handler vs Smithery](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/merge-agent-handler-vs-smithery.md)
- [One vs Smithery](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/one-vs-smithery.md)
- [Smithery vs StackOne](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/smithery-vs-stackone.md)
- [Smithery vs Unified.to MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/smithery-vs-unified-to-mcp.md)
- [Smithery vs Zapier MCP (agent actions)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/smithery-vs-zapier-mcp.md)
- [Composio (API + MCP) vs letme](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/composio-rube-vs-letme.md)
- [letme vs Merge Agent Handler](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/letme-vs-merge-agent-handler.md)
- [letme vs One](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/letme-vs-one.md)
- [letme vs StackOne](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/letme-vs-stackone.md)
- [letme vs Unified.to MCP Server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/letme-vs-unified-to-mcp.md)
- [letme vs Zapier MCP (agent actions)](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/letme-vs-zapier-mcp.md)

## 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.