Pink data: x402 vs AP2 vs ACP in numbers, 495K weekly npm downloads vs zero official packages

Description and use

x402 dominates all usage metrics, while AP2 and ACP lack official SDKs and show low development activity, revealing gaps in budget and approval management.

Problem

Developers lack side‑by‑side public metrics to evaluate AI‑agent payment plumbing protocols, making it hard to choose a mature, well‑used option.

Outcome

x402 leads by an order of magnitude on all usage metrics; AP2 and ACP lack official packages and have minimal development activity, exposing a gap in budget and approval features across all protocols.

Workflow

• 1. Clone the Pink-Agentic-Payments/agent-payment-protocols-tracker repo. 2. Run python3 collect.py with a GitHub token to gather metrics. 3. Inspect tracker.csv for per‑protocol GitHub stars, contributors, commits, npm/PyPI downloads, MCP servers, and listed partners. 4. Review the WHAT_NONE_DECIDE.md file to understand budget/approval gaps. 5. Compare results to decide which protocol best meets project needs.

Evidence

x402's official npm packages get 494,987 downloads a week combined (the sum of its five official packages)

Source

AP2 and ACP have no official package we could confirm

Source

AP2's spec repo last pushed 2026-06-17. That doesn't necessarily mean the protocol is dead

Source

x402's own spec answers this directly, in its scope section: "Out of Scope: This specification does not include: ... Client-side budget management"

Source