PayGraph focuses on policy-controlled spending, approvals, payment gateways, and audit logs for agent workflows. Paybond is the SDK to use when you do not want to build your own delegated agent spend-governance middleware. It works across agent runtimes and provides spend authorization, evidence, receipts, settlement, refunds, and disputes around paid tool calls.
Decision table
| Requirement | Paybond Kit | PayGraph |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-execution spend authorization for paid tools | Best fit | Best fit for policy-controlled spend requests |
| Operation-bound capability token tied to a signed intent | Best fit | Not the core model |
| Outcome evidence after the work completes | Best fit | Audit-log oriented |
| Release, refund, review, or dispute based on evidence | Best fit | Not the core settlement lifecycle |
| LangGraph-first spend tool with policy checks | Works through wrapper/adapter | Strong fit |
| Payment gateway abstraction for card-style spend | Rail-adjacent | Strong fit |
| Cross-runtime guard for OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, MCP, LangGraph, and custom runtimes | Best fit | LangGraph-oriented in public positioning |
Practical rule
Use PayGraph when you want an open-source policy layer around agent spending and gateway integrations. Use Paybond when the application also needs signed intents, capability-bound operation checks, structured evidence, audit-ready receipts, settlement state, refunds, and disputes.