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Head to head · Usage billing · October 2026 research run

Orb vs Tempo

Tempo scores 76.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Orb's 66.5 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Orb leads on reliability and agent ergonomics. Both do usage billing.

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

OrbOrb, Inc. · HTTP API B66.5/100#289 of 950 TempoTempo · HTTP API BB76.6/100#27 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 71
  • Agent ergonomics, 84 against 78

Watch for

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

Tempo BB

Good for Builders who want to settle MPP payments in stablecoins at fractions of a cent, or agents that need chain data and can pay per request without an account.

Ahead on

  • Security & auth, 70 against 55
  • Payments & pricing, 80 against 5
  • Maintenance & community, 88 against 82

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Open source

Watch for

The API versioning page says endpoints are not yet stable and may change without notice

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runOrbTempoEdge
Reliability16%207771Orb +6
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28888even
Agent ergonomics13%16.28478Orb +6
Security & auth14%17.55570Tempo +15
Payments & pricing10%12.5580Tempo +75
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88288Tempo +6
Transparency & trust7%8.86563Orb +2
Negative events≤1500
Total66.5 · B76.6 · BB

Facts side by side

FactOrbTempo
KindHTTP APIHTTP API
VendorOrb, Inc.Tempo
Hosted endpointhttps://api.withorb.com/v1https://api.tempo.xyz/v1
TransportsHTTPHTTP, Streamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingPaidPay per use
x402nono
LicenceProprietary service under Orb's Platform Terms and Conditions. The SDKs on GitHub are Apache-2.0MIT OR Apache-2.0
Tools exposednone4
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-092026-09-24
Terms last updated2024-11-13no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2025-05-072026-07-31
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity5 stars, 185k npm/wk1k stars, 209k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3.1/5 (8)

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.

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

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

Tempo

  1. Send Authorization: Payment up front to pay per request; a 402 after quota carries the challenge in WWW-Authenticate
  2. Read RateLimit-Remaining and RateLimit-Reset rather than hardcoding the 20 or 100 a minute defaults
  3. Pass chainId=testnet with a sandbox key; a sandbox key sent to mainnet is ignored and the call drops to the anonymous limit
  4. Use tempo request --dry-run before paying an MPP endpoint to see the cost
  5. Branch on error.code, never on error.message

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Orb or Tempo?

Tempo scores 76.6 (BB) on agent readiness against Orb's 66.5 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Orb leads on reliability and agent ergonomics.

Do Orb and Tempo need an API key?

Orb needs an API key. Tempo takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

Can an agent call Orb and Tempo without installing anything?

Yes. Orb has a hosted endpoint at https://api.withorb.com/v1 and Tempo at https://api.tempo.xyz/v1.

Are Orb and Tempo open source?

No open-source release is listed for Orb. Tempo is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Orb or Tempo

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