Coinbase Onramp vs Alchemy Pay Coinbase Onramp leads by 18 points.
Coinbase Onramp scores 18 points above Alchemy Pay, led by purchase cost, quote honesty, and named licence. Coinbase Onramp ranks #6 and Alchemy Pay #12 of 16 published onramps. Every term of the gap is on the ledger below; the inputs are on the audit receipt.
CBCoinbase Onramp60
vs
Alchemy Pay42
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99 · ranks #6 and #12 of 16
Coinbase Onramp scores 18 points above Alchemy Pay, led by purchase cost, quote honesty, and named licence.
CBCoinbase Onramp #6 of 1660
Alchemy Pay #12 of 1642
Scores are out of 100; published scores fall within 41–99; a bar is empty at 41 and full at 99.
Why, term by termCoinbase Onramp leads on 3 of 4 published criteria; Alchemy Pay on 1. The terms sum to the gap.
TermCoinbase OnrampAlchemy PayWeightPoints
Purchase cost5/101/108.2+8.5for Coinbase Onramp+4.4 of 32
Quote honesty5/102/106.2+4.9for Coinbase Onramp+2.5 of 32
Named licence7/103/105.3+5.5for Coinbase Onramp+2.8 of 32
KYC and speed5/106/104.3−1.1for Alchemy Pay−0.6 of 32
Net of the terms+17.7
Criteria roundingThe criteria block is rounded to whole points before it is spread+0.2
Reproduced gap+17.9
Published gapAfter score rounding and bounds — see the note below6042+18.0
Weight is in points of the 86-point weighted total. Points are score points of the gap between the two.
Coinbase OnrampScore 60Coinbase's embeddable fiat-to-crypto rail (CDP Onramp): Coinbase-account and US guest-checkout flows riding Coinbase's own first-party licence stack — NYDFS-listed in the US and an ESMA-register-confirmed MiCA CASP (Coinbase Luxembourg S.A.) passported across 30 EEA states — with published 2.5% credit-card / 0.5% ACH fees but an unquantified spread, no EUR bank rail, and no published time-to-coins anywhere on its docs.Strength: Licence identity — 7/10Watch-out: For the category's representative European buyer the bank rail simply does not exist — the only bank transfer is US ACH — so a €200 purchase means a card at 2.5% (credit, non-US) or an unpublished debit rate plus an unquantified spread, with no published commitment anywhere on the docs about how long the coins take to arrive; and with hosted guest checkout being discontinued (stated date June 30, 2026, already passed), non-US users increasingly need a full Coinbase account, which turns the 'rail' into exchange onboarding.Alchemy PayScore 42Hybrid fiat-crypto ramp with genuinely deep local-rail coverage (UPI, PIX, SPEI, African mobile money) and published numeric KYC tiers, but no public fee schedule anywhere, a licence story whose numbered registers (NMLS, AUSTRAC) belong to entities that are NOT the regional buyer's counterparty, and a sampled UPI all-in near 20%.Strength: Kyc friction time to coins — 6/10Watch-out: The widget will quote you a rate whose spread is never disclosed and can be enormous on exactly the rails this segment exists for — a sampled ₹22,153 UPI purchase delivered USDT at ₹111.9 apiece against the ₹95.79 interbank rate embedded in the same API response, a 19.7% all-in the buyer only discovers by doing the maths on the delivered amount — and if Alchemy Pay rejects your order after capture, clause 6.5 lets it charge you a processing fee to refund your own money.
Quick facts
At a glance
1 of 3 rows read the same for both.
FactCoinbase OnrampAlchemy Pay
PricingSnapshotCoinbase Developer Platform "Onramp FAQ" (https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/onramp/additional-resources/faq.md), fetched 29 September 2026, HTTP 200, unchanged from 18 August 2026. "Coinbase Onramp is free for developers to use." Spread: "Coinbase Onramp includes a spread in the price when you buy cryptocurrencies." (no percentage, no named benchmark). Coinbase fees: "Fees are calculated at the time you place your order and may be determined by a combination of factors, including the selected payment method, the size of the order, and market conditions such as volatility and liquidity." Card and ACH: "There is a 2.5% fee for credit card transactions, and 0.5% fee for ACH". USDC: "Zero-fee USDC onramping is available to select partners through a subsidy program for eligible partners." Network fees: "We charge a fee based on our estimate of these network fees." No debit-card fee number is published on this page. Worked example (our arithmetic, not a Coinbase figure): a EUR 200 credit-card purchase carries EUR 5.00 in card fee (2.5 percent) plus the unquantified spread and the estimated network fee; there is no EUR bank rail, since the only bank transfer listed is "ACH (US Bank Transfer)".No fee schedule is published. The Alchemy Pay docs page "Fiat currencies, Payment Method Coverages plus Other Details" (https://alchemypay.readme.io/docs/fiat-currency-country-payment-method-coverage-plus-fees-and-limits.md, updatedAt 21 November 2025), fetched 29 September 2026, HTTP 200, links a Notion table "On-Ramp Payment Methods" whose columns (processing time, KYC countries, currencies, KYC level, pay-way code, method type, minimum, maximum and daily limits, documents) include no fee column (read through the Notion API on 29 September 2026). The Crypto Ramp Terms ("Last updated: Dec 25, 2025") say only "9.1 All fees payable under this Agreement are displayed during the purchase flow", and the marketing page says "Your users will appreciate the lowest fees in the industry." Sampled from Alchemy Pay's public quote API on 29 September 2026 (not published prices): a card quote for 200 euros carried a ramp fee of 4.19 percent and delivered about 4.3 percent less USDT than the USD rate in the same response; a Pix quote for 1,206 reais carried a 2.67 percent ramp fee and about 4.5 percent all-in; a UPI quote returned no data that day.
Asset coverageEditorial——
Region fitSnapshotus, europe, caeurope, asia, latam
From the published criteria
Which should you pick?
CB
Coinbase Onramp
60#6 of 16
Leads
Pick it when
Pick Coinbase Onramp if purchase cost matters most — it scores 5/10 to Alchemy Pay's 1/10 there (weight 34).
Strength
Licence identity — 7/10
Tradeoff
For the category's representative European buyer the bank rail simply does not exist — the only bank transfer is US ACH — so a €200 purchase means a card at 2.5% (credit, non-US) or an unpublished debit rate plus an unquantified spread, with no published commitment anywhere on the docs about how long the coins take to arrive; and with hosted guest checkout being discontinued (stated date June 30, 2026, already passed), non-US users increasingly need a full Coinbase account, which turns the 'rail' into exchange onboarding.
Alchemy Pay
42#12 of 16
Pick it when
Pick Alchemy Pay if KYC and speed matters most — it scores 6/10 to Coinbase Onramp's 5/10 there (weight 18).
Strength
Kyc friction time to coins — 6/10
Tradeoff
The widget will quote you a rate whose spread is never disclosed and can be enormous on exactly the rails this segment exists for — a sampled ₹22,153 UPI purchase delivered USDT at ₹111.9 apiece against the ₹95.79 interbank rate embedded in the same API response, a 19.7% all-in the buyer only discovers by doing the maths on the delivered amount — and if Alchemy Pay rejects your order after capture, clause 6.5 lets it charge you a processing fee to refund your own money.
Self-identify in 10 seconds
Which one is actually for you?
CBCoinbase OnrampLeads
Choose Coinbase Onramp if purchase cost matters most
Purchase cost: 5/10 against 1/10 for Alchemy Pay (weight 34)
Quote honesty: 5/10 against 2/10 for Alchemy Pay (weight 26)
Named licence: 7/10 against 3/10 for Alchemy Pay (weight 22)
Coinbase OnrampScore 60Coinbase's embeddable fiat-to-crypto rail (CDP Onramp): Coinbase-account and US guest-checkout flows riding Coinbase's own first-party licence stack — NYDFS-listed in the US and an ESMA-register-confirmed MiCA CASP (Coinbase Luxembourg S.A.) passported across 30 EEA states — with published 2.5% credit-card / 0.5% ACH fees but an unquantified spread, no EUR bank rail, and no published time-to-coins anywhere on its docs.Strength: Licence identity — 7/10Watch-out: For the category's representative European buyer the bank rail simply does not exist — the only bank transfer is US ACH — so a €200 purchase means a card at 2.5% (credit, non-US) or an unpublished debit rate plus an unquantified spread, with no published commitment anywhere on the docs about how long the coins take to arrive; and with hosted guest checkout being discontinued (stated date June 30, 2026, already passed), non-US users increasingly need a full Coinbase account, which turns the 'rail' into exchange onboarding.
Alchemy Pay
Choose Alchemy Pay if KYC and speed matters most
KYC and speed: 6/10 against 5/10 for Coinbase Onramp (weight 18)
Alchemy PayScore 42Hybrid fiat-crypto ramp with genuinely deep local-rail coverage (UPI, PIX, SPEI, African mobile money) and published numeric KYC tiers, but no public fee schedule anywhere, a licence story whose numbered registers (NMLS, AUSTRAC) belong to entities that are NOT the regional buyer's counterparty, and a sampled UPI all-in near 20%.Strength: Kyc friction time to coins — 6/10Watch-out: The widget will quote you a rate whose spread is never disclosed and can be enormous on exactly the rails this segment exists for — a sampled ₹22,153 UPI purchase delivered USDT at ₹111.9 apiece against the ₹95.79 interbank rate embedded in the same API response, a 19.7% all-in the buyer only discovers by doing the maths on the delivered amount — and if Alchemy Pay rejects your order after capture, clause 6.5 lets it charge you a processing fee to refund your own money.
Criterion by criterion
Scorecard
Published criteria · weight in points of 868 of 8 cells scored. Strength is read from the evidence file; the weight is the published one. Methodology
Purchase cost
by 4 of 10weight 8.2 of 86Coinbase Onramp leads
Coinbase Onramp5/10 out of 10
Alchemy Pay1/10 out of 10
Quote honesty
by 3 of 10weight 6.2 of 86Coinbase Onramp leads
Coinbase Onramp5/10 out of 10
Alchemy Pay2/10 out of 10
Named licence
by 4 of 10weight 5.3 of 86Coinbase Onramp leads
Coinbase Onramp7/10 out of 10
Alchemy Pay3/10 out of 10
KYC and speed
by 1 of 10weight 4.3 of 86Alchemy Pay leads
Coinbase Onramp5/10 out of 10
Alchemy Pay6/10 out of 10
Score dimensions
weights sum to 86
The published score is five dimensions, each weighted for the category. "Published criteria" is the criteria block above; the other four are the engine's own terms — availability, friction, trust record, measured data. Each bar is one side's points out of that dimension's maximum; the weight beside the name is its points of the 86-point weighted total. The published criteria above can fill 24 of the block’s 30. A weight marked “constant here” belongs to a dimension every ranked product in the category holds at the same value: it still counts in the total, and it orders nothing here.
Availabilityweight 20 of 86
Coinbase Onramp12/20Alchemy Pay12/20
Tie
Published criteriaweight 30 of 86
Coinbase Onramp13.1/30Alchemy Pay6.2/30
Coinbase Onramp leads
Frictionweight 10 of 86 · constant here
Coinbase Onramp2.7/10Alchemy Pay2.7/10
Tie
Trust recordweight 8 of 86 · constant here
Coinbase Onramp3.2/8Alchemy Pay3.2/8
Tie
Measured dataweight 18 of 86
Coinbase Onramp8.3/18Alchemy Pay8.3/18
Tie
Decision rulePublished order
Choose Coinbase Onramp unless the term Alchemy Pay leads on is the one you are buying.
Pick Alchemy Pay if KYC and speed matters most — it scores 6/10 to Coinbase Onramp's 5/10 there (weight 18).
The published order weighs every criterion the same way for everyone. To weigh them your way, run .
From the published order
Next best action
If this isn't your case
Other matchups worth comparing
How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
Regulatory failure: no licence where you are, or a forced market exit.
Scored by Whose money-transmission licence is my money riding — and is that entity my counterparty? · 22% (Coinbase Onramp 7/10, Alchemy Pay 3/10)
Execution failure: you get a worse price, later, or nothing.
Scored by Is the number on the widget the number that settles? · 26% (Coinbase Onramp 5/10, Alchemy Pay 2/10)
Information failure: the number is wrong or bought, or your data leaks.
Scored by How much identity do I surrender before the coins land in my wallet, and how long does that take? · 18% (Coinbase Onramp 5/10, Alchemy Pay 6/10)
Not assessed by this ranking: Control failure, Liveness failure, Custody failure, Insolvency failure, Exit failure. A high place says nothing about these; the Methodology tab says what each means.
Also scored, as cost, quality or a summary of several families: What does a €200 purchase actually cost me — by card and by bank, all-in? (34%).
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Coinbase Onramp scores 18 points above Alchemy Pay, led by purchase cost, quote honesty, and named licence. Published scores, out of 100: Coinbase Onramp 60 (rank 6 of 16 onramps), Alchemy Pay 42 (rank 12 of 16).
Reviewed means both products compared here was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
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