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Commerce Layer

Commerce Layer is the headless, multi-market commerce API used by global brands to sell everywhere — web, mobile, in-store, chatbot, AI agent, and IoT. The company exposes a JSON:API-compliant Core API with 130+ top-level resources covering orders, line items, SKUs, bundles, prices, markets, stores, inventory, customers, payments (Adyen, Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, Klarna, Checkout.com), tax calculation (Avalara, TaxJar, Vertex, Stripe Tax), shipping, promotions, subscriptions, returns, and webhooks. The platform also ships a Provisioning API for organizations/SSO/credentials and a Metrics API for analytics (with a local MCP server for AI agents), plus hosted micro-frontends, dashboard apps, a CLI, CMS integrations, and SDKs for JavaScript/TypeScript, Ruby, React, and drop-in.js.

agent native

Reference-quality API operations across every facet — a rich contract, published governance, transparent operations, and machine-readable commercial terms.

Kin Score

API Evangelist profiles Commerce Layer the way a machine reads it — 209 machine-readable artifacts across 148 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.

Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Commerce Layer scores 74.2/100 (exemplar), with a separate agent-readiness read of 80/100 (agent native). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.

Kin Score

This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance.

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-07-27 · rubric v0.5
Composite quality — 74.2/100 · exemplar
Contract Quality 17.3 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 15.2 / 20
Commercial Clarity 18.4 / 20
Operational Transparency 9.2 / 13
Governance 8.8 / 12
Discoverability 6.8 / 10
Regulatory · Payments 9.8 / 15
Agent readiness — 80/100 · agent native
Machine-Readable Contract 18 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 15 / 15
MCP Server 12 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 10 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 8 / 8
Request/Response Examples 7 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 6 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

How we profile Commerce Layer

Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Commerce Layer. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.

APIs 148

Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Commerce Layer analysis API

Operations with analysis resource

Commerce Layer carts API

Operations with carts resource

Commerce Layer has_many API

relationship kind

Commerce Layer has_one API

relationship kind

Commerce Layer singleton API

singleton resource

Commerce Layer usage API

Operations with usage resource

Commerce Layer user API

The user API from Commerce Layer — 1 operation(s) for user.

Scroll within the panel for all 148 ·

Postman Collections 3

A runnable collection turns the contract into something a developer can execute in seconds. We profile them because the fastest way to trust an API is to make a real call against it.

Ready-to-run Postman collections for exercising this provider's APIs.

Open Collections 3

Open, tool-agnostic collections carry the same runnable value as Postman without locking you to one client — the portable, forkable form of the same exercise.

Open, tool-agnostic API collections (OpenAPI-derived and Bruno).

Arazzo Workflows 17

Real integrations are rarely a single call. Arazzo describes the multi-step sequences — auth, then create, then confirm — so both a human and an agent can follow the choreography, not just the endpoints.

Multi-step API workflows described with the Arazzo specification.

Commerce Layer Add Line Item and Read It Back

Add a SKU line item to an existing order and retrieve the created line item.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Build Cart and Branch on Order Status

Create an order, add a line item, read the order, and branch to place it only when it is in draft.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Create and Ship a Shipment

Create a shipment for an order, mark it ready to ship, then ship it.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Create Customer, Address, and Order

Onboard a customer, save a customer address book entry, then open an order for them.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Create Customer with Address Book Entry

Create a customer, create an address, and link it as a customer address book entry.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Create Market with Payment Method

Create a market tied to merchant, price list, and inventory model, then add a payment method to it.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Create Order and Add Line Item

Create a draft order in a market, add a SKU line item to it, then read the order back.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Create Return with Line Item

Open a return against an order, add a return line item for an order line item, then request it.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Create Shipment for Order

Create a shipment for an order from a stock location, then advance it toward ready to ship.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Create SKU and Price

Create a SKU under a shipping category, then create a price for it in a price list.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Create SKU, Price It, and Read SKU Back

Create a SKU, create a price for it in a price list, then retrieve the SKU.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Guest Order Add Line Item and Place

Open a guest order, add a SKU line item, then place the order in one flow.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Add Payment Method and Place Order

Attach a payment method to an order and then transition the order to placed.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Add Two Line Items to an Order

Create an order, then add two SKU line items to it and read the recalculated totals.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Refresh and Place an Order

Refresh an order's prices and taxes, then place it once recalculated.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Set Order Shipping and Billing Addresses

Create a shipping address and a billing address, then attach both to an existing order.

ARAZZO

Commerce Layer Place and Capture an Order

Place an order, read its status, then capture payment only once it is placed.

ARAZZO

Scroll within the panel for all 17 ·

MCP Servers 1

Model Context Protocol servers expose these APIs directly to AI agents. We profile them because agent-native access is the fastest-growing way this provider's capabilities actually get used.

Model Context Protocol servers that expose these APIs to AI agents.

GraphQL 1

Where a provider ships GraphQL, the schema is the contract. We profile it alongside the REST surface so the whole interface is legible in one place.

GraphQL schemas published by this provider.

Commerce Layer GraphQL Schema

Commerce Layer is a headless, multi-market commerce API built on a JSON:API-compliant REST surface. This document describes a conceptual GraphQL schema that maps the Commerce La...

GRAPHQL

Pricing Plans 1

Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the six things the Kin Score reads for commercial clarity.

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Rate Limits 1

Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Commerce Layer Rate Limits

13 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Features 25

The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.

Notable capabilities this provider offers.

Headless, API-first commerce platform with stateless OAuth 2.0 checkout to sell anywhere — web, mobile, chatbot, AI agent, IoT, in-store kiosk
JSON:API (jsonapi.org/format/) compliant Core API with 917 path operations across 130+ top-level resources on a single OpenAPI 3.1 spec
Native multi-market and multi-currency: independent markets, merchants, stores, price lists, inventory models, payment methods, shipping zones, and tax calculators per market
Native subscriptions and recurring orders: order subscriptions, customer subscriptions, order copies, in-stock subscriptions, subscription models
Promotion engine: BXGY, percentage discount, fixed amount, fixed price, free gift, free shipping, custom promotions, flex promotions, plus gift cards, coupons, coupon recipients, and SKU lists / order-amount rules
Built-in inventory: stock items, stock locations, inventory models, inventory return locations, stock transfers, stock reservations, reserved stocks, delivery lead times
First-party payment integrations: Adyen, Stripe, Braintree, PayPal, Klarna, Checkout.com, Axerve, Satispay, plus external/manual gateways
First-party tax integrations: Avalara, TaxJar, Vertex, Stripe Tax, plus manual and external calculators
First-party shipping integrations: 100+ carrier accounts via the carrier accounts schema; EasyPost pickups; Google and Bing geocoders
Real-time webhooks plus an Event Stream Hub (SSE) with resource-based and time-based replay
Rules engine with public JSON schemas for order rules and price list rules
Provisioning API (48 ops): organizations, memberships, roles, API credentials, identity providers (SSO)
Metrics API: breakdown, date_breakdown, stats, search, export queries over orders / carts / returns / usage, plus FBT analysis
Local MCP server for the Metrics API (commercelayer/mcp-server-metrics) for AI-agent access
Hosted micro frontends: checkout, cart, my-account, microstore, identity — each open-source on GitHub
Imports, exports, and cleanups for bulk resource management
Tagging across resources; sparse fieldsets; filtering, sorting, pagination, and include parameters per JSON:API
Official SDKs: JavaScript/TypeScript (commercelayer-sdk), JS Auth, Ruby (commercelayer_ruby), Provisioning SDK, plus React Components and drop-in.js
CLI with 15+ plugins (resources, webhooks, imports, exports, metrics, checkout, orders, provisioning, microstore, seeder, cleanups, triggers, tags, links, token)
CMS integrations: Sanity, Contentful, Contentstack, DatoCMS, Gatsby
Dashboard apps: orders, customers, shipments, returns, promotions, imports, exports, webhooks, skus, sku-lists, price-lists, inventory, stock-transfers, tags
Public unauthenticated endpoints for resources discovery, OpenAPI download, carrier schema, order/price rules schemas, organization config schema, OAuth data schema
Free Developer plan with free live orders/month; Enterprise plan with dedicated support, custom roles, custom identity provider, SLAs; optional Distributed OMS and Promotion Engine add-ons; pro-bono plans for selected non-profits
OAuth 2.0 grants: client_credentials, password, authorization_code, refresh_token, JWT bearer
Multi-environment: live and test environments with separate rate limits

Scroll within the panel for all 25 ·

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts give the data shared meaning across APIs. We profile them because semantics are what let a machine reconcile 'customer' here with 'customer' somewhere else.

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Commerce Layer Context

0 classes · 9 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Governance rulesets we run against this provider's specs — the automated checks behind parts of the score. Profiling them makes the quality bar explicit and re-runnable, not a matter of opinion.

Commerce Layer API Rules

6 rules · 5 warnings

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 2

Standalone JSON Schema definitions describe the data models behind the API. We profile them so the shapes are validatable on their own — useful long after a single request is forgotten.

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Commerce Layer Order

1 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Commerce Layer SKU

1 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Security Posture 3

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Commerce Layer Authentication

http · 1 scheme

SECURITY

Commerce Layer Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Commerce Layer Trust Center

SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS

SECURITY

Agentic Access 1

An x-agentic-access contract marks which operations are safe for an agent to run on its own and which need a human in the loop. It is the difference between an API an agent can use and one it can use safely.

Recommended x-agentic-access execution contracts for AI agents.

Commerce Layer Agentic Access

1334 operations · 371 acting · 3 human-in-the-loop

1334 operations · 371 acting

AGENTIC

Resources

Every other property we hold for Commerce Layer — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.

Agent Surfaces 2

MCP servers, agent skills, and machine-readable catalogs

Company 2

The organization behind the API

← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/commerce-layer · machine-readable index on apis.io