Alby alternative for developers and AI agents

Alby and ln.bot can both give an AI agent a Lightning wallet, and both have an MCP server for it. The difference is who runs the node. Alby Hub is a self-custodial wallet with its own Lightning node, which you run on your computer, a home server or a cloud server you rent, and apps reach it through Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC). With ln.bot there is nothing to run: ln.bot operates the nodes and the channel liquidity, balances sit on ln.bot's nodes, and your code calls an HTTPS API with a key.

Checked on 23 October 2026: the Alby details on this page come from Alby's guides, pricing page, GitHub and npm, linked where they appear.

Running a node, or calling an API

Alby Hub runs an embedded LDK node by default, or drives an LND, Phoenixd, Cashu or CLN backend (Hub README). Where it runs is up to you: Alby's guide covers desktop, Docker, Linux, home-server platforms such as Umbrel and Start9, and cloud servers. The software is free, with no fees added to transactions (pricing); what you pay for is the server and the Lightning channels. With the embedded node, Hub can receive before it has any inbound capacity: just-in-time channels open on demand, and the fee comes out of the incoming payment.

Running a node is still operations work. It has to be online to receive, and Alby's README says Hub should not be exposed to the public internet, so a cloud deployment needs a private network or a locked-down proxy.

ln.bot is custodial. ln.bot runs the nodes and the channel liquidity, your balance sits on ln.bot's nodes, and what you hold is an API key rather than the node's keys. That suits an agent's spending money better than savings, and ln.bot's terms recommend treating a wallet as an operational balance.

NWC connection strings and API keys

Apps reach Alby Hub through NWC. You create a connection in Hub, copy its secret (a nostr+walletconnect:// URL), and the app sends its requests to the wallet over Nostr relays. Alby's JavaScript SDK wraps this in a small client:

import { LN, SATS } from "@getalby/sdk/lnclient";

const ln = new LN("nostr+walletconnect://..."); // a connection secret from Alby Hub
await ln.pay("r7vq3np@ln.bot", SATS(500)); // ₿500 to a Lightning address

ln.bot is plain HTTPS with a bearer key, so it works from any language with an HTTP client, and the SDKs cover five of them:

import { LnBot } from "@lnbot/sdk";

const w = new LnBot({ apiKey: process.env.LNBOT_USER_KEY }).wallet("wal_...");
await w.payments.create({ target: "r7vq3np@ln.bot", amount: 500 }); // ₿500 to a Lightning address

Community libraries cover NWC in Python, Go, Rust, PHP, Swift and other languages (awesome-nwc). NWC code runs against any NWC wallet, so your users can bring their own. Code written for ln.bot runs against ln.bot. ln.bot doesn't speak NWC, so apps that only use NWC can't connect to an ln.bot wallet.

A wallet for each agent

Alby's AI page suggests sub-wallets for agents, with their funds kept apart from your main wallet. A sub-wallet is a virtual account inside your Hub: it has its own balance and NWC connection, its funds stay in the Hub's Lightning balance, and the Hub's operator can see every transaction. hub-cli creates one from a script, and with a linked Alby Account it can have its own Lightning address. The free plan allows three sub-wallets and Pro, at $3.9 a month, removes the limit (pricing, October 2026).

npx @getalby/hub-cli create-sub-wallet --name "research-agent"

On ln.bot, each agent's wallet is a call to the hosted API. It comes with a random Lightning address, a wallet key that reaches only that wallet, and an MCP endpoint:

import { LnBot } from "@lnbot/sdk";

const ln = new LnBot({ apiKey: process.env.LNBOT_USER_KEY }); // uk_...

const { walletId, address } = await ln.wallets.create();
const { key } = await ln.wallet(walletId).key.create(); // wk_..., this wallet only

const mcpUrl = `https://api.ln.bot/v1/wallets/${walletId}/mcp`;
console.log(address); // a random address, such as x4k7m2@ln.bot

Give the agent the wallet key and that URL (MCP docs). The MCP tools have no spending cap of their own, so fund the wallet with only what the agent may spend. Alby can also put a renewable budget on an NWC connection; ln.bot keys have no limits of that kind, and the wallet's balance is the cap.

Alby's MCP server runs locally or at mcp.getalby.com, takes an NWC connection secret as its bearer token, and has tools for balances, invoices, payments, transactions and fetching L402 resources. ln.bot's is hosted per wallet, with 12 tools, three of them for L402: creating a challenge, paying one and verifying a token.

Paying and charging with L402

Alby's tools pay L402 APIs. The MCP server has a fetch_l402 tool, and lightning-tools has fetchWithL402 and fetch402, which also handles x402 and MPP; they pay from any NWC wallet. For servers, lightning-tools added helpers that issue and check L402 tokens in April 2026. You create the invoice through your wallet and wire the helpers into your own routes.

ln.bot ships the server side as middleware for Express and ASP.NET Core. It creates the invoice in your wallet, answers with the 402, and checks each paid token with one call to ln.bot:

import express from "express";
import { l402, LnBot } from "@lnbot/l402";

const app = express();
const ln = new LnBot({ apiKey: process.env.LNBOT_USER_KEY });

// ₿10 per request, paid into this wallet
app.use("/api/premium", l402.paywall(ln, { walletId: "wal_...", price: 10 }));

app.get("/api/premium/forecast", (req, res) => {
  res.json({ forecast: "sunny", paymentHash: req.l402?.paymentHash });
});

app.listen(3000);

By default a paid token buys one request. On the paying side, l402.client refuses any request priced above maxPrice and stops when its budget for the hour, day, week or month runs out. The pay-per-call guide shows both ends.

Where Alby is the better choice

• You want to hold your own keys, on a node you control.
• Your users bring their own wallets. NWC code works with any NWC wallet, and Alby Go and the Alby extension connect people to Hub and other wallets.
• You build for Nostr. The Alby extension manages Nostr keys for logging in to sites, and lightning-tools can send zaps.
• You want the wallet itself to enforce a budget on each app connection.
• You want some fiat conveniences. Alby's LN client takes amounts in dollars or other currencies, and the free plan lists card and SEPA top-ups (pricing).
• You want to test without real money. Alby's CLI docs point to an NWC faucet that hands out test wallets.

ln.bot doesn't speak NWC and can't be self-hosted: it is a hosted, custodial service, and ln.bot holds the balances. It has nothing for Nostr or the browser. Amounts are in bitcoin only, without fiat pricing or conversion, and payments go over Lightning only. There is no test network, so every wallet holds real bitcoin, and a key can spend whatever its wallet holds.

Moving funds from Alby Hub

To move bitcoin from Hub into an ln.bot wallet, create an invoice with the CLI and pay it from Hub:

curl -fsSL https://ln.bot/install.sh | bash
lnbot init
lnbot invoice create --amount 50000 --memo "From Alby Hub" --no-wait
lnbot balance  # after you've paid the invoice from Hub

lnbot init creates an account and a wallet, and prints the wallet's Lightning address and a recovery passphrase to keep safe. invoice create prints the BOLT11 invoice to paste into Hub. Your getalby.com address belongs to your Alby Account and stays with it. The ln.bot wallet has its own random address, such as x4k7m2@ln.bot, and a name you choose costs ₿100 or more, once. To keep one address whatever wallet sits behind it, serve it from your own domain (Lightning addresses explains how).

Alby's old shared wallet

Alby stopped its shared wallet service on 4 January 2025. Balances left after that became fee credits for Alby Hub, which lasted through the first three quarters of 2025. Alby's terms of service (updated 2 September 2025) also let it deduct the remaining balance of an inactive legacy shared-wallet account, created in 2023 or earlier, after 12 months without a completed transaction; the clause covers only those legacy accounts. Alby Hub, the wallet Alby offers now, is self-custodial.