Orbyt Intelligence vs Pave
Closed loop.Open API.
Pave closes the loop. Orbyt opens the data.
Infrastructure coverage: API access, MCP support, data license, verification, breadth.
Pave works if you are inside Pave.
Their payroll-feed dataset is fresh, but only for the companies feeding it. Step outside the network and the data is not there. No free tier. No public API. No MCP. No license that lets you cite or redistribute. Orbyt Intelligence covers 3,500 roles across 81 cities whether or not a company has ever signed a contract with us. Free public API. MCP for AI agents. CC BY 4.0 so you can use the data in a research paper, a policy doc, or a product you ship. Pave is a members-only club. Orbyt is the public square.
Where Pave lands. Where it does not.
Where Pave is strong
- Real-time data feed from customer payroll systems. Freshest in-category for members.
- Strong VC and startup-community brand
- Polished HR-facing dashboard UX
- Deep leveling data for participating customers
- Modern pricing and go-to-market vs legacy incumbents
Where Pave falls short
- Data universe limited to Pave customers. Misses non-participating companies entirely.
- No free developer tier
- No public API or MCP support
- Proprietary license. No data redistribution permitted.
- Narrow focus on VC-backed startup ecosystem
- No coverage of public companies, enterprise, or non-startup SaaS in depth
What Pave cannot do.
The specific gaps. Every one of them is a gap Orbyt Intelligence fills below.
The dataset is a private club. Non-members do not exist.
Pave's data comes from a real-time feed connected to customer payroll systems. For companies inside the network, the data is fresh and deep. For every company outside the network, including most of the U.S. labor market, there is effectively no data. If Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple, or Microsoft are not Pave customers, Pave does not benchmark them.
No free public API tier.
Pave does not publish a free developer tier. There is no way to evaluate the API without a contract. For a developer, a researcher, or a startup founder who wants to validate the data against a use case before committing budget, the doors are closed.
No MCP. AI agents cannot query Pave as a tool.
As of Q2 2026, Pave does not ship an MCP manifest. Claude Desktop cannot call Pave during a conversation. ChatGPT Actions cannot pull a Pave benchmark as part of a workflow. Autonomous agent frameworks (Langchain, crewai, AutoGen) cannot list Pave as an available data source.
Proprietary license. Data cannot be cited or redistributed.
Pave data is proprietary and restricted to their customers. Even if you are a paying member, the agreement restricts how the data can be used outside internal analysis. For anyone publishing a research paper, building a public transparency tool, or training a model on compensation data, the license closes off the use case.
Coverage thins outside the VC-backed startup ecosystem.
Pave's core buyer is HR at Series A through Series C startups. That is where their customer network is densest and their benchmarks are most credible. Public companies at scale, enterprise SaaS, frontier AI labs that are not customers, non-tech industries, regional employers: these segments see the dataset thin fast.
What you get with Orbyt Intelligence.
Every advantage below is live, published, and free to verify today.
Free public API with Bearer auth. Integrate in minutes.
MCP native for AI agents and autonomous systems
Broader coverage: AI labs, Big Tech, enterprise SaaS, public companies. Not just VC-backed startups.
CC BY 4.0 data license. Cite, redistribute, build on top of.
Transparent published pricing. $0 to $4,999/mo.
Forward projections through 2030 with methodology disclosure
3,500+ roles across 81 U.S. cities. Not limited to the payroll-feed universe.
Light years ahead of Pave.
Every capability below is shipping today. Live endpoints, published spec, documented methodology.
Coverage that does not depend on a customer relationship.
3,500+ roles across 81 U.S. cities. Every frontier AI lab (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Meta AI, Cohere, Mistral) regardless of whether they are Orbyt customers. Every FAANG company. Every Fortune 500 tech employer. Public companies cross-referenced against SEC proxy filings. The data pipeline is source-driven, not customer-driven.
Free public API with Bearer auth. No membership required.
30 req/min on the free tier, no credit card required. OpenAPI 3.1 spec at /openapi-intelligence.yaml. SDK patterns and webhook examples documented. A startup, a developer, or a researcher can query the data in under five minutes without opening a commercial conversation. Pave has no equivalent tier.
MCP manifest. Claude Desktop and ChatGPT Actions query Orbyt directly.
Orbyt Intelligence ships a public MCP manifest at /mcp-intelligence.json with 15+ tool calls exposed. An agent answering 'what does a staff PM at a Series B fintech in Denver earn?' can call the Orbyt dataset directly during the conversation. No scraping. No human-in-the-loop. No custom integration.
CC BY 4.0. Legally, you can cite, redistribute, and build on Orbyt data.
Orbyt Salary Intelligence is published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Cite the data in a comp transparency report. Embed a widget in your hiring page. Train a model. Redistribute derivative datasets. Pave's data is contract-locked even for paying customers. The license is the feature that decides whether the product is legal in your use case.
Forward projections through 2030.
Every role, every city, projected year-over-year through 2030. AI premium modeling. Macro wage growth. Regional shifts. Industry automation pressure. Projections are hedged (ranges, not single points) and every methodology step is disclosed. Pave reports current-quarter data from customers. Orbyt reports current-quarter plus the next six years.
Projections through 2030
Pave tells you today. Orbyt tells you 2030.
L6 Research Scientist, OpenAI. Annual total comp, projected year over year with methodology disclosed.
Feature by feature.
| Feature | Orbyt Intelligence | Pave |
|---|---|---|
| Public API with free tierDecisive | ||
| MCP support for AI agentsDecisive | ||
| Total comp breakdown | ||
| Real-time payroll feed | ||
| Roles covered | 3,500+ | Startup subset |
| Cities covered (U.S.) | 81 | Major hubs |
| Coverage outside VC-backed startups | Broad | Limited |
| Forward projections to 2030 | ||
| Data licenseDecisive | CC BY 4.0 | Proprietary |
| Pricing transparent | Partial | |
| Free tier exists | ||
| OpenAPI spec published | ||
| Target buyer | Developers, AI teams, HR, candidates | Startup HR/People |
Based on publicly available feature lists and documentation as of Q2 2026. Updated quarterly.
Orbyt Intelligence does not require membership. 3,500 roles covered whether a company has ever signed a contract. Free public API. MCP for AI agents. CC BY 4.0 license. Transparent pricing. The data is built on public sources and open channels, so the coverage is not gated by who is inside the payroll network.
Pave's dataset ends at their customer list. Ours does not. Coverage should not require a membership.
Common questions.
More comparisons.
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