Get an audit

Head to head · Card payments · October 2026 research run

Orb vs Skyfire API + MCP

Orb scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Skyfire API + MCP's 40.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Skyfire API + MCP leads on payments & pricing. Both do card payments.

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

OrbOrb, Inc. · HTTP API B66.5/100#289 of 950 Skyfire API + MCPSkyfire · HTTP API E40.3/100#911 of 950

Which one, for what

Orb B

Good for A software or AI company that bills on usage and needs event metering, plan versioning, prepaid credits, invoicing and revenue reporting behind one API, with Stripe or Adyen collecting the money.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 77 against 19
  • Schema & documentation, 88 against 59
  • Agent ergonomics, 84 against 61
  • Security & auth, 55 against 41
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 31
  • Transparency & trust, 65 against 53

Watch for

All three plans (Core, Advanced, Enterprise) show custom pricing only, and the pricing page sends new customers to sales

Skyfire API + MCP E

Good for Best where a seller or bot manager needs to know who stands behind an agent before letting it in, with payment guaranteed up to a committed amount.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 20 against 5

Watch for

No x402 or MPP; both buyer and seller must be on Skyfire

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrbSkyfire API + MCPEdge
Reliability16%207719Orb +58
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28859Orb +29
Agent ergonomics13%16.28461Orb +23
Security & auth14%17.55541Orb +14
Payments & pricing10%12.5520Skyfire API + MCP +15
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88231Orb +51
Transparency & trust7%8.86553Orb +12
Negative events≤1500
Total66.5 · B40.3 · E

Facts side by side

FactOrbSkyfire API + MCP
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorOrb, Inc.Skyfire
Hosted endpointhttps://api.withorb.com/v1https://api.skyfire.xyz
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyAPI key
PricingPaidFreemium
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Orb's Platform Terms and Conditions. The SDKs on GitHub are Apache-2.0none
Tools exposednone4
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-092026-08-04
Terms last updated2024-11-132025-06-25
Privacy policy last updated2025-05-072025-06-25
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity5 stars, 185k npm/wk16 npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone2/5 (2)

Verdicts

Orb

Orb suits a company that bills on usage and wants one API for events, plans, credits and invoices. It publishes an OpenAPI 3.1 file, numeric rate limits, idempotency keys and a dry-run header. Every plan is priced on request and access starts with sales. No scope list for API keys or public sub-processor list was found.

Skyfire API + MCP

Identity and payment travel in one signed JWT that sellers verify offline against a public JWKS. No x402 or MPP; both buyer and seller must be on Skyfire.

Before you call either

Orb

  1. Call https://api.withorb.com/v1 with Authorization: Bearer <key>. A person creates the key in the Orb web app under organisation settings, in test mode or live mode
  2. Send an Idempotency-Key of at most 64 characters on every POST and PATCH. A 409 means the first request is still running or the body changed
  3. Add Dry-Run: True to check a write first, and confirm Orb-Dry-Run: true in the response. Ingest, amend and deprecate event calls ignore it and run for real
  4. Do not send Idempotency-Key with Dry-Run. Orb returns a validation error
  5. Page with limit (default 20, maximum 100) and pass next_cursor back as cursor while has_more is true
  6. Back off exponentially on 429. Test mode allows 5 writes a second and 2,000 ingested events a minute

Skyfire API + MCP

  1. Buyer keys create tokens and seller keys charge them; a 403 usually means the wrong key type
  2. Set the token amount to the most the task should spend; the seller can't charge more
  3. Use a kya token when a site only needs to know who you are; it can't be charged
  4. Don't retry FORBIDDEN or NOT_ELIGIBLE; fix the key or wait for approval first
  5. Rehearse against mcp-sandbox.skyfire.xyz before using mcp.skyfire.xyz

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Orb or Skyfire API + MCP?

Orb scores 66.5 (B) on agent readiness against Skyfire API + MCP's 40.3 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Skyfire API + MCP leads on payments & pricing.

Do Orb and Skyfire API + MCP need an API key?

Both need an API key.

Can an agent call Orb and Skyfire API + MCP without installing anything?

Yes. Orb has a hosted endpoint at https://api.withorb.com/v1 and Skyfire API + MCP at https://api.skyfire.xyz.

Other comparisons with Orb or Skyfire API + MCP

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report