Head to head · Payments stablecoin · October 2026 research run
Skyfire API + MCP vs Tempo
Tempo has a score of 76.6 (BB) against Skyfire API + MCP's 40.6 (E). Both do payments stablecoin. The largest gap is payments & pricing, 60 points.
Which one, for what
Pick Skyfire API + MCP for
No category where it leads by five points or more.
Pick Tempo for
- reliability (+52)
- schema & documentation (+29)
- agent ergonomics (+17)
- security & auth (+29)
- payments & pricing (+60)
- maintenance & community (+57)
- transparency & trust (+7)
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Skyfire API + MCP | Tempo | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 19 | 71 | Tempo +52 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 59 | 88 | Tempo +29 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 61 | 78 | Tempo +17 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 41 | 70 | Tempo +29 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 20 | 80 | Tempo +60 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 31 | 88 | Tempo +57 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 56 | 63 | Tempo +7 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | 40.6 · E | 76.6 · BB |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Skyfire API + MCP | Tempo |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Skyfire | Tempo |
| Hosted endpoint | https://api.skyfire.xyz | https://api.tempo.xyz/v1 |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | HTTP, Streamable HTTP |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | MIT OR Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 4 | 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 | not listed | not listed |
| Last release | 2026-08-04 | 2026-09-24 |
| Popularity | 16 npm/wk | 1k stars, 209k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (2) | 3.1/5 (8) |
Verdicts
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.
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
Skyfire API + MCP
- Buyer keys create tokens and seller keys charge them; a 403 usually means the wrong key type
- Set the token amount to the most the task should spend; the seller can't charge more
- Use a kya token when a site only needs to know who you are; it can't be charged
- Don't retry
FORBIDDENorNOT_ELIGIBLE; fix the key or wait for approval first - Rehearse against mcp-sandbox.skyfire.xyz before using mcp.skyfire.xyz
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 Skyfire API + MCP or Tempo
Machine-readable
/api/v1/tools/skyfire.json·/api/v1/tools/tempo.json- This page as Markdown,
/compare/skyfire-vs-tempo.md