Overview

Rating

10.0 / 10

Rating

Best For

Developers building agents that consume paid APIs

Best For

Developers who want to discover, share, and deploy MCP servers

Product Summary

Agentic payments for APIs — agents can discover, access, and pay for hundreds of APIs via MCP with no API key management.

Product Summary

Smithery is a registry and marketplace for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. Developers can discover, share, and deploy MCP tools for connecting AI agents to databases, APIs, file systems, and other services. Smithery provides hosted MCP servers, reducing the setup complexity for teams adopting the MCP standard.

Starting Price

Per API call (varies by provider)Per usage-based

Starting Price

$0Per month

Free Trial

Yes

Free Trial

Yes

Free Version

Yes

Website

orthogonal.com

Website

smithery.ai

Key features

Core capabilities each platform advertises.

Orthogonal

Agent API payments
MCP integration
No API key management
Pay-per-use access
API discovery for agents

Smithery

MCP server registry and marketplace
One-click MCP server deployment
Server discovery and search
Configuration management
Community-contributed servers

Strengths and tradeoffs

What each tool does well, and the limitations to keep in mind.

Orthogonal

Pros

Solves real friction — agents need API access without manual key management
Strong founder backgrounds in payments (Coinbase, Vercel) and API infrastructure (Google)
30+ API partners already onboarded showing solid early supply-side traction
MCP-native design aligns with the emerging agent protocol standard
Pay-per-call model with no commitments is agent-friendly

Cons

Marketplace cold-start problem needs both API providers and agent developers
Commoditizable if major cloud providers build native agent API marketplaces
No public revenue or usage metrics disclosed
Thin margin business if acting purely as a payment pass-through

Smithery

Pros

Production-ready platform
Good performance
Active development
Strong features

Cons

Enterprise pricing varies
Setup complexity

Orthogonal or Smithery — which should you choose?

Choose Orthogonal if you wantChoose if you want

Agent API access
Automated API procurement
Agent tool marketplace
Pay-per-use API consumption

Choose Smithery if you wantChoose if you want

Discovering and deploying MCP servers
Sharing MCP servers with the community
Managing multiple MCP server configurations
Finding tools for AI agents
MCP ecosystem exploration

Compare Orthogonal and Smithery on your own traffic

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1,000+Models

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Orthogonal vs Smithery (2026)

Overview

Key features

Strengths and tradeoffs

Orthogonal or Smithery — which should you choose?

Compare Orthogonal and Smithery on your own traffic

Frequently Asked Questions

Other popular comparisons

Orthogonal vs Smithery (2026)

Overview

Key features

Strengths and tradeoffs

Orthogonal or Smithery — which should you choose?

Compare Orthogonal and Smithery on your own traffic

Frequently Asked Questions

What is MCP (Model Context Protocol)?

Do I need MCP tooling if I already have function calling?

Other popular comparisons