OpenNode vs ln.bot for Lightning APIs

OpenNode is a bitcoin payment processor for registered businesses. It gives a merchant hosted checkout pages, store plugins and invoices, prices charges in dollars or other currencies, and can convert what comes in to US dollars for a US bank account. ln.bot is a hosted wallet API for software that keeps a balance of its own and spends it: an AI agent paying for API calls, a service paying another service, a platform that gives each user or agent a wallet.

Checked on 23 October 2026: the OpenNode details below come from OpenNode's site, help centre and developer docs, linked where they appear.

Which one fits

• Customers pay your business for goods or services, and you want dollars in the bank: OpenNode.
• Your code pays for things, or each of many agents needs a balance of its own: ln.bot.
• Both happen in one product: customers pay through OpenNode, and the agents behind the product spend from ln.bot wallets. Moving bitcoin between the two is an ordinary Lightning payment.

What OpenNode does

OpenNode raised a $20M Series A in 2022, led by Kingsway Capital with Twitter and Tim Draper taking part (The Block), and lists Substack and Fold among its customers. It is available to registered businesses only: a business verifies its registration and address, and its main owners verify their identity.

What a merchant gets:

• Hosted checkout pages, payment buttons and links, and invoices for customers.
• Plugins for Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop and OpenCart.
• Charges priced in a fiat currency, which OpenNode turns into a bitcoin amount at the current rate, payable over Lightning or on-chain.
• Conversion to US dollars, with settlement and bank transfers, for US-based businesses.
• Official Node.js and PHP libraries and a development environment on Bitcoin's testnet.

On fees, OpenNode gives 1% as its typical processing fee for payments and payouts, with no setup or monthly fees. Lightning withdrawals are free, and on-demand on-chain withdrawals cost 1% (as of October 2026).

A charge and an invoice

Both APIs create a Lightning payment request in one call. With OpenNode's Node.js library, priced in dollars:

import opennode from "opennode";

opennode.setCredentials(process.env.OPENNODE_API_KEY, "live");

const charge = await opennode.createCharge({
  amount: 1.5,
  currency: "USD", // without a currency, the amount is in satoshis
  description: "Report #42",
  callback_url: "https://example.com/webhooks/opennode",
});

With ln.bot, amounts are always integers in bitcoin's smallest unit, so this invoice is for ₿1,000:

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

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

const invoice = await ln.wallet("wal_...").invoices.create({
  amount: 1000,
  memo: "Report #42",
});
console.log(invoice.bolt11);

OpenNode tells you about payments through the charge's callback_url. ln.bot sends webhooks and also streams events, so a worker can wait on an invoice without running a web server.

Spending from code

OpenNode sends bitcoin out as withdrawals, on-chain or over Lightning, and a Lightning withdrawal needs a BOLT11 invoice from the recipient. That fits moving a merchant's balance somewhere else.

ln.bot is built for code that spends as it goes. A payment can go to a Lightning address, an LNURL or an invoice, an idempotency key makes a retry safe, and a payment between two ln.bot wallets settles in under a second:

const w = ln.wallet("wal_...");

const payment = await w.payments.create({
  target: "r7vq3np@ln.bot", // a Lightning address, an LNURL or a BOLT11 invoice
  amount: 500,
  idempotencyKey: "job-1187", // a retry with the same key can't pay twice
});
console.log(payment.status); // "processing" at first, then "settled" or "failed"

For APIs that charge per request with L402, @lnbot/l402 pays the challenge and retries the request, within limits you set. It checks the amount in the invoice itself, not the price the server announces:

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

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

const api = l402.client(ln, {
  walletId: "wal_...",
  maxPrice: 100, // refuse any single request above ₿100
  budgetSats: 5_000, // and stop after ₿5,000 in a day
  budgetPeriod: "day",
});

const forecast = await api.get("https://api.example.com/premium/forecast");

The budget is kept in memory, so it resets when the process restarts. The pay-per-call guide covers the server side.

One account, or a wallet per agent

An OpenNode API key belongs to one business account. For platforms, OpenNode documents managed accounts: full OpenNode accounts that a platform creates for its users once OpenNode support enables the feature for its API key, with an endpoint that creates an identity-verification link for each user.

On ln.bot a wallet is an API call, with no identity check and no limit on how many. Each one gets a random Lightning address, and a wallet key reaches that wallet and no other:

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

console.log(address); // a random address, such as x4k7m2@ln.bot

Give an agent its wallet key, or connect its MCP client to https://api.ln.bot/v1/wallets/{walletId}/mcp (see the MCP docs). The MCP tools can spend whatever the wallet holds, so put in only what the agent may spend.

Side by side

What ln.bot doesn't do

ln.bot has nothing for a merchant's checkout: there are no payment pages, store plugins or invoice templates. It never touches fiat, so prices can't be set in dollars and nothing settles to a bank. It works on Lightning only, without on-chain addresses, and it has no test network, so test with small amounts.

It is also custodial. ln.bot runs the Lightning nodes and the channel liquidity, and balances sit on ln.bot's nodes, which makes a wallet an operational balance for spending rather than a place for savings.