# Paid vs Payman Genie MCP

> Paid scores 55.1 (C) to Payman Genie MCP's 52.5 (D) for card payments. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/paid-vs-payman
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/paid-vs-payman.md (~2,300 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/paid-vs-payman.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/paid-vs-payman.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

Paid scores 55.1 (C) on agent readiness against Payman Genie MCP's 52.5 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Payman Genie MCP leads on security & auth and payments & pricing. Both do card payments.

- Paid: grade C, 55.1/100, rank #669 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/paid.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/paid.json
- Payman Genie MCP: grade D, 52.5/100, rank #735 of 950. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/payman.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/payman.json
- Best payment and monetisation platforms for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/payment-platforms/index.md
- All 76 platforms comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/payment-platforms/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Paid (C)

Good for: A team selling an AI agent that needs usage metering, credit balances, cost and margin tracking and invoicing in one service, with Stripe as the payment rail.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 35 against 25
- Schema & documentation, 64 against 56
- Maintenance & community, 77 against 60
- Transparency & trust, 51 against 43

Watch for: The docs index advertises an OpenAPI 3.1 file at two addresses, and both returned 404 on 9 October 2026

### Payman Genie MCP (D)

Good for: A person or small business who wants an assistant to pay bills, issue one-time cards or pay x402 APIs within hard limits.

Ahead on:
- Security & auth, 80 against 65
- Payments & pricing, 35 against 30

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: No published pricing, status page, rate limits or changelog


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Paid | Payman Genie MCP | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 35 | 25 | Paid +10 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 64 | 56 | Paid +8 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 70 | 68 | Paid +2 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 65 | 80 | Payman Genie MCP +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 35 | Payman Genie MCP +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 60 | Paid +17 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 51 | 43 | Paid +8 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **55.1 · C** | **52.5 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Paid | Payman Genie MCP |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Agent Paid Limited | Payman AI |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://api.agentpaid.io/api/v2` | `https://genie.paymanai.com/mcp` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | Streamable HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | payer tooling only |
| Licence | Proprietary service under Paid's Master Subscription Agreement. The Node and Python SDKs on GitHub are MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 5 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-09-15 | 2026-09-19 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | 2026-09-29 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2026-09-29 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | yes |
| Popularity | 24k npm/wk | 0 stars, 33 npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## Verdicts

**Paid.** Paid suits a builder who wants usage metering, credits and invoicing behind one API, with restricted and customer-bound keys, OAuth on the MCP server and a free plan that needs no card. No status page, SLA figure, API changelog or rate-limit numbers were found, both advertised OpenAPI links returned 404, and card payments need the builder's own Stripe account.

**Payman Genie MCP.** OAuth 2.1 with PKCE, two scopes, one-hour access tokens and refresh tokens rotated on every use and revoked on logout. No published pricing, status page, rate limits or changelog.

## Before you call either

### Paid

1. Call `https://api.agentpaid.io/api/v2` with `Authorization: Bearer <key>`. A person creates the first key at app.paid.ai. No programmatic signup was found
2. Give every signal a stable `idempotencyKey` and resend the same key on retry. Signals without one are not deduplicated
3. Send at most 500 signals a request. A 429 rejects the whole batch, so wait for `Retry-After` and resend it all
4. Read the `code` field on a 429. `CONCURRENCY_LIMIT_EXCEEDED` carries no `Retry-After` and clears when an analytics query finishes
5. Install the Python SDK as `paid-python`, the name in its README and `pyproject.toml`. The quickstart's `pip install paid` names a package we could not check

### Payman Genie MCP

1. Pass the person's request to `ask_genie` in their own words; don't pick accounts or fill payment fields
2. On `needs_approval`, stop and tell the person; approval happens in their Genie account
3. Retry only after `NOTHING_RAN` or `BUSY`, never after `OUTCOME_UNKNOWN`
4. Treat `done` as acted, not settled; check the activity history before confirming a payment
5. Sign-ins from bridge 0.3.x lack `genie:self`; log out and sign in again to use the self-service tools

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Paid or Payman Genie MCP?

Paid scores 55.1 (C) on agent readiness against Payman Genie MCP's 52.5 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Payman Genie MCP leads on security & auth and payments & pricing.

### Do Paid and Payman Genie MCP need an API key?

Paid takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Payman Genie MCP uses an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call Paid and Payman Genie MCP without installing anything?

Yes. Paid has a hosted endpoint at https://api.agentpaid.io/api/v2 and Payman Genie MCP at https://genie.paymanai.com/mcp.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with Paid or Payman Genie MCP

- [ATXP vs Paid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atxp-vs-paid.md)
- [Lago vs Paid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-paid.md)
- [Metronome vs Paid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/metronome-vs-paid.md)
- [Nevermined API + MCP vs Paid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nevermined-vs-paid.md)
- [Orb vs Paid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orb-vs-paid.md)
- [Paid vs Stripe API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/paid-vs-stripe-mcp.md)
- [Paid vs Tempo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/paid-vs-tempo.md)
- [Adyen MCP server vs Payman Genie MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adyen-mcp-server-vs-payman.md)
- [Crossmint API + Docs MCP vs Paid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crossmint-vs-paid.md)
- [Crossmint API + Docs MCP vs Payman Genie MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/crossmint-vs-payman.md)
- [Lago vs Payman Genie MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/lago-vs-payman.md)
- [Orb vs Payman Genie MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/orb-vs-payman.md)
- [Payman Genie MCP vs Skyfire API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/payman-vs-skyfire.md)
- [Adyen MCP server vs Paid](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/adyen-mcp-server-vs-paid.md)
- [Paid vs PayPal MCP server](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/paid-vs-paypal-mcp-server.md)
- [Paid vs Skyfire API + MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/paid-vs-skyfire.md)
- [ATXP vs Payman Genie MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/atxp-vs-payman.md)
- [Circle Gateway Nanopayments vs Payman Genie MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/circle-gateway-nanopayments-vs-payman.md)
- [Nevermined API + MCP vs Payman Genie MCP](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/nevermined-vs-payman.md)
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