Head to head · Payments stablecoin · October 2026 research run
Nevermined API + MCP vs Tempo
Tempo has a score of 76.6 (BB) against Nevermined API + MCP's 71.1 (BB). Both do payments stablecoin. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 15 points.
Nevermined API + MCPNevermined · HTTP API
BB71.1/100#89 of 452
TempoTempo · HTTP API
BB76.6/100#27 of 452
Which one, for what
Pick Nevermined API + MCP for
No category where it leads by five points or more.
Pick Tempo for
- schema & documentation (+8)
- security & auth (+7)
- payments & pricing (+15)
- transparency & trust (+9)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Nevermined API + MCP | Tempo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 72 | 71 | Nevermined API + MCP +1 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 80 | 88 | Tempo +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 74 | 78 | Tempo +4 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 63 | 70 | Tempo +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 65 | 80 | Tempo +15 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 89 | 88 | Nevermined API + MCP +1 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 54 | 63 | Tempo +9 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 71.1 · BB | 76.6 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Nevermined API + MCP | Tempo |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Nevermined | Tempo |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.live.nevermined.app | https://api.tempo.xyz/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | payer tooling only | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT OR Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 12 | 4 |
| Context cost (tools/list) | n/a | n/a |
| p95 latency | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Availability (30d) | not measured yet | not measured yet |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| MCP registry | io.github.nevermined-io/catalog | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-09-24 |
| Popularity | 17 stars, 468 npm/wk, 4.4k PyPI/wk | 1k stars, 209k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (2) | 3.1/5 (8) |
Verdicts
Nevermined API + MCP
Fees published without a login, 1% on stablecoins, 2% on cards and 2% for the Router. The x402 paywall settles Nevermined plan tokens, so generic x402 clients need its SDK or API to pay.
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
Nevermined API + MCP
- Call
quote_servicebeforepay_service; quotes cost nothing - Ask the person to open the
setup_delegationURL once; you can't mint the first key or budget yourself - Branch on the error
codeand retry only whenretryableis true - Create a small, short delegation per task; cards stop at $10.00 across delegations unless the owner raises it
- Use
sandbox:keys and mcp.sandbox.nevermined.app until the flow works
Tempo
- Send
Authorization: Paymentup front to pay per request; a 402 after quota carries the challenge inWWW-Authenticate - Read
RateLimit-RemainingandRateLimit-Resetrather than hardcoding the 20 or 100 a minute defaults - Pass
chainId=testnetwith a sandbox key; a sandbox key sent to mainnet is ignored and the call drops to the anonymous limit - Use
tempo request --dry-runbefore paying an MPP endpoint to see the cost - Branch on
error.code, never onerror.message
Other comparisons with Nevermined API + MCP or Tempo
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/nevermined.json·/api/v1/tools/tempo.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/nevermined-vs-tempo.md