# Monid vs Smithery

> Monid scores 63.3 (B) to Smithery's 50.7 (D) for tool access for agents. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/monid-vs-smithery
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/monid-vs-smithery.md (~2,400 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/monid-vs-smithery.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/monid-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
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-23

Monid scores 63.3 (B) on agent readiness against Smithery's 50.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Smithery leads on reliability. Both do tool access for agents. Monid accepts x402. Smithery doesn't.

- Monid: grade B, 63.3/100, rank #449 of 1201. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/monid.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/monid.json
- Smithery: grade D, 50.7/100, rank #897 of 1201. 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 45 tool access comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aggregator/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Monid (B)

Good for: An agent that needs occasional paid data or media calls (search, scraping, social, enrichment, maps, generative media) from many providers without a key and plan for each, picked at run time by need and price from one capped balance, or paid per run by x402.

Ahead on:
- Agent ergonomics, 71 against 65
- Security & auth, 62 against 50
- Payments & pricing, 85 against 10
- Maintenance & community, 64 against 43

Also in its favour:
- An agent can pay per call over x402, with no account
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: No numbers for rate limits, no SLA and no idempotency key on paid runs

### 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 53

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 | Monid | Smithery | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 53 | 60 | Smithery +7 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 79 | 76 | Monid +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 71 | 65 | Monid +6 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 62 | 50 | Monid +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 85 | 10 | Monid +75 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 43 | Monid +21 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 49 | 46 | Monid +3 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -3 | -2 | |
| **Total** | | **63.3 · B** | **50.7 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Monid | Smithery |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Monid, Inc. | Smithery (Arcade.dev) |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://mcp.monid.ai/v1` | `https://api.smithery.ai` |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP, HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| x402 | yes | no |
| Licence | Proprietary hosted service under Monid, Inc.'s terms of service (last updated 16 October 2026). The connector framework at github.com/monid-ai/monid is MIT-licensed, and the `@monid-ai/cli` package is MIT per its package.json and npm record, with no LICENSE file in its repository. The ranking, billing, REST API and MCP server are not in either repository | 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 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-21 | 2026-07-20 |
| Terms last updated |  | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated |  | 2025-06-20 |
| Customer content may train models |  |  |
| Terms restrict automated access |  |  |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  |  |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  |  |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  |  |
| Popularity | 1.3k npm/wk | 840 stars, 2.7k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.3/5 (4) | none |

## Verdicts

**Monid.** An agent can search a catalogue of paid data and media endpoints by need, read each one's schema and price, and pay per run from one prepaid balance with person-set budgets, or by x402. Rate limits have no numbers, paid runs take no idempotency key, no security contact was found, and the skill sends a known email to setup telemetry.

**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

### Monid

1. Call inspect before every run and pass body, queryParams and pathParams in the shape it returns; run inputs aren't typed at the API level.
2. Treat a `COMPLETED` run as success only when `providerResponse.httpStatus` is 2xx; provider errors complete with a non-2xx status and aren't charged.
3. Don't resend a paid run after a timeout without checking `GET /v1/runs`; there's no idempotency key and a repeat bills again.
4. Start with small `maxItems` on per-result endpoints; limits often apply per query, not per call.
5. Pass `--client` alone to `monid setup`, or skip it; the email flag only feeds Monid's setup telemetry.

### 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, Monid or Smithery?

Monid scores 63.3 (B) on agent readiness against Smithery's 50.7 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Smithery leads on reliability.

### Do Monid and Smithery need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in. An agent can also pay Monid per call over x402, with no account.

### Can an agent call Monid and Smithery without installing anything?

Yes. Monid has a hosted endpoint at https://mcp.monid.ai/v1 and Smithery at https://api.smithery.ai.


## For agents

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

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

## Disclosure

- Monid competes with letme, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp