I tried four ways to gate my MCP server. Only one didn't need a Stripe account.

Your MCP server is getting hammered by agents you didn't authorize. A free tier is open to the world. A premium tool is one runaway loop away from torching your LLM budget. You need a gate.

So I went shopping. Four projects ship something that calls itself an MCP gate today. I wired each one against a test server, ran a handful of tool calls through it, and wrote down what hurt.

Here's the honest comparison.

PayGated (paygated.dev)

This is the closest thing captcha-mcp has to a named competitor. PayGated wraps MCP tools with a Stripe-backed payment gate. Self-hosted, MIT-licensed, "no monthly SaaS bills." It's a clean piece of work.