Orthogonal — MCP Tooling Platform
MCP ToolingLayer 3Usage-basedFounded 2025|San Francisco, CA|2-10
Visit websiteWhat is Orthogonal?
Orthogonal is an API marketplace and payment layer for AI agents. Part of YC W2026, it was founded by Christian Pickett (ex-Coinbase payments, ex-Vercel billing) and Bera Sogut (ex-Google reCAPTCHA/Maps, ex-Amazon Robotics, 2x ACM ICPC World Finalist). Developers and agents get instant access to hundreds of paid APIs through a single MCP server or SDK, with no key management and pay-as-you-go pricing.
The platform handles rate limits, retries, and dynamic routing automatically. For API providers, listing once makes their service instantly discoverable by every agent on the platform. Compatible with Claude Code, OpenClaw, Codex, Cursor, and any MCP-compatible agent. The initial focus is on search, scraping, datasets, and AI model APIs.
Orthogonal has 30+ named API partners already integrated including ScrapeGraph, People Data Labs, Apollo.io, and Composio. It supports the x402 protocol for machine-to-machine payments. Think Stripe meets an app store for the agentic API economy.
Key Features
- ✓Agent API payments
- ✓MCP integration
- ✓No API key management
- ✓Pay-per-use access
- ✓API discovery for agents
Pros & Cons
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
Orthogonal Pricing
Free trial available
Pay-per-callPer API call (varies by provider)usage-based
- ✓No monthly fees
- ✓No minimums
- ✓ free credits for new signups
- ✓MCP server access
Common Use Cases
Developers building agents that consume paid APIs
- •Agent API access
- •Automated API procurement
- •Agent tool marketplace
- •Pay-per-use API consumption
Using Orthogonal with Respan
Orthogonal handles API payments for agents while Respan monitors the LLM calls driving those agents. Together they manage both the cost of API consumption and the quality of AI-driven decisions.
- ✓Track total agent costs including Orthogonal API payments and LLM costs in Respan
- ✓Monitor agent API consumption patterns through Respan alongside Orthogonal billing
- ✓Optimize agent workflows by analyzing API usage and LLM performance together
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Last verified: March 27, 2026