# How agents work with Stripe

Understand how AI agents interact with Stripe APIs, billing, and commerce.

Stripe provides three components of agent support that you can use independently or combine based on your use case: developer tools for building integrations, billing for monetizing AI apps, and commerce for enabling agent-to-agent and agent-to-human transactions.

## Understand the architecture

Your end users interact with your AI application, which connects independently to each component. Each component also connects directly to Stripe: agent developer tools call the Stripe API to build your integration, Stripe Billing meters usage and generates invoices, and agentic commerce handles catalogs, payments, and discovery for the transactions your application initiates.
A diagram showing how the three components of Stripe's agent ecosystem connect. (See full diagram at https://docs.stripe.com/agents/how-it-works)
## Agent developer tools

Use Stripe’s agent-first developer tools to build and maintain Stripe integrations with AI assistance.

| Tool | Use case | Connection method |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [MCP server](https://docs.stripe.com/mcp.md) | Give AI agents read and write access to Stripe resources | Remote server at mcp.stripe.com |
| [Agent skills](https://docs.stripe.com/skills.md) | Help agents follow Stripe best practices when writing integration code | Install from the skills catalog or agent plugin marketplaces |
| [Stripe CLI](https://docs.stripe.com/cli.md) | Manage Stripe resources, trigger events, and tail logs from the command line | Local installation |

These tools help agents build *your* integration. They don’t handle billing or commerce on their own.

## Agentic commerce

Enable AI agents to buy and sell products on behalf of users.

- **Sellers**: Make your product catalog discoverable and purchasable by agents through the [Stripe Directory](https://docs.stripe.com/directory.md) and [catalog feeds](https://docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce/product-feed.md).
- **Agents**: Present product feeds, manage carts, and [accept payments](https://docs.stripe.com/payments/machine.md) as an intermediary between buyers and sellers.

## Monetize your AI app

[Charge your users](https://docs.stripe.com/billing/token-billing.md) for AI features using Stripe Billing’s usage-based capabilities.

- **Token metering**: Track LLM token consumption and bill per token, per request, or per compute unit.
- **Tiered pricing**: Offer free tiers with paid upgrades for higher usage limits.
- **Hybrid billing**: Combine a base subscription with metered overages.

Start with a subscription, add a [Meter](https://docs.stripe.com/api/billing/meter.md) to track usage, and Stripe generates invoices based on consumption.

## Common combinations

Most real-world implementations use more than one component:

| Scenario | Components used | Example |
| --- | --- | --- |
| AI coding assistant with paid tier | Developer tools and Billing | Use MCP to build the integration, then meter API calls with token billing. |
| AI shopping agent | Developer tools and Commerce | Use MCP to manage the Stripe account, then enable the agent to discover and purchase products. |
| AI platform with agent marketplace | All three | Bill platform users for AI usage, let agents transact on users’ behalf, and use developer tools to maintain the integration. |

## See also

- [Agents and AI on Stripe](https://docs.stripe.com/agents.md)
- [Agentic commerce overview](https://docs.stripe.com/agentic-commerce.md)