AP2 (Agent Payments Protocol) is a standard for authorizing and executing payments initiated by AI agents. It focuses on the authorization layer — mandates, spending limits and delegated authority — that sits on top of an underlying settlement rail like x402 or a card network. Where a rail answers "how does money move", AP2 answers "is this agent allowed to move it".
The projects below implement AP2 mandates, verifiable credentials for agents, and authorization tooling — plus demos showing a full authorize-then-settle flow.
For how the authorization layer relates to the settlement layer, read x402 vs AP2 or the AP2 guide.
The AP2 category right now
34 AP2 projects are tracked here, together holding 485 GitHub stars. Attention is concentrated: 1 repositories account for the bulk of it, with lucid-agents (189★) at the top, while the median project sits at 3★. Treat the tail as prior art and reference code rather than production dependencies.
Language mix: TypeScript (38%) and Python (15%). Repeat publishers matter in this category — AgentGatePay (2), OrcaQubits (2), solana-foundation (2) ship more than one project each. Most-used topics: ap2, ai-agents, payments.
Momentum check: 50% of these projects saw a commit in the past quarter (8 in the past month alone), while 1 have been dormant for more than a year — activity is uneven — check the last-commit date before adopting. lucid-agents is the most recently updated repository in the group.
Figures recomputed from the tracked repositories on every build.
Compare: x402 vs AP2 · All agent payment protocols
