{
 "url": "https://agenticweb.wiki/compare/a2a-vs-aitp/",
 "title": "A2A vs AITP: differences & adoption",
 "description": "Agent2Agent Protocol vs AITP (Agent Interaction & Transaction Protocol): The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both.…",
 "markdown_url": "https://agenticweb.wiki/compare/a2a-vs-aitp/index.md",
 "markdown": "# Agent2Agent Protocol (A2A) vs AITP (Agent Interaction & Transaction Protocol)\n\nThe map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both.\n\n[6 Coordinate](/category/coordinate/) [Agent2Agent Protocol](/protocols/a2a/) · [6 Coordinate](/category/coordinate/) [AITP (Agent Interaction & Transaction Protocol)](/protocols/aitp/)\n\n|  | [Agent2Agent Protocol](/protocols/a2a/) A2A | [AITP (Agent Interaction & Transaction Protocol)](/protocols/aitp/) AITP |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| Lifecycle step | 6 Coordinate: Talk to another agent | 6 Coordinate: Talk to another agent |\n| Answers | How do two independent agents, built on different frameworks, discover each other and delegate a task to completion? | How do two agents representing different, mutually untrusted people or businesses (e.g. a personal assistant and an airline's booking agent) talk to each other, exchange forms and payment requests, and not just plain text? |\n| Governed by | Linux Foundation (Technical Steering Committee: AWS, Cisco, Google, IBM Research, Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow); Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) since 17 August 2026 | NEAR AI-led open-source specification, MIT licensed (github.com/nearai/aitp); developed in parallel with NEAR AI's own agent hub and community input via Telegram/GitHub issues and PRs; no independent standards body |\n| Status (issuer's words) | Stable, v1.0.1 | Version: 0.1.0. Status: Draft. \"AITP is a spec in progress and we are open to comments, feedback, and contributions\" (project's own words) |\n| Version | 1.0.1 (2026-05-28) | 0.1.0 (Draft) |\n| Form / transport | endpoint | endpoint |\n| Found at | /.well-known/agent-card.json | None defined by AITP itself; agents are addressed directly once discovered out of band (e.g. via the NEAR AI Hub's own agent registry, which is outside the AITP spec) |\n| Implementation | multi-implementation — 150+ supporting organizations, claimed by the Linux Foundation on 9 April 2026 (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/a2a-protocol-surpasses-150-organizations-lands-in-major-cloud-platforms-and-sees-enterprise-production-use-in-first-year). Card-version censuses are separate measurements, kept with their frames and not averaged. Agenstry 2026-09-01 (https://agenstry.com/blog/state-of-the-agent-card): of 1,910 cards declaring protocolVersion, 65.5% (1,252) are 0.3.x and 25.5% (488) are 1.0.x. Emissar 2026-10-02 (https://emissar.ai/learn/a2a-adoption-2026): 276 cards on the Tranco top 1M (205 in v1.0 shape, 71 in v0.3 shape, 0 signed, 0 in the top 1,000 domains). APIs.io / Kin Lane 2026-09-21 (https://apievangelist.com/2026/09/21/a2a-adoption-is-421-of-27840-and-most-of-them-arrived-with-the-card/): 421 parseable cards out of 4,718 hosts probed (27,840 providers). rStation 2026-10-12 (https://rstation.ai/problems/ai_agent/papers/1): 661 cards on 2,164 x402 seller hosts (189 pass their attributed version and fail a check that assumes 1.0). | prototype — NEAR AI (agents built on the NEAR AI Hub are claimed to 'support all AITP features') |\n| Evidence | 11 verified, 2 reported | 2 verified |\n| Primary use case | Let agents talk to other agents | Let agents talk to other agents |\n| Last verified | 2026-10-23 (current) | 2026-10-23 (current) |\n| Specification | [https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/specification/](https://a2a-protocol.org/latest/specification/) | [https://aitp.dev/](https://aitp.dev/) |\n\n## When to use which\n\n- Choose Agent2Agent Protocol when your question is “How do two independent agents, built on different frameworks, discover each other and delegate a task to completion?” and you accept its maturity: status \"Stable, v1.0.1\", implementation multi-implementation (150+ supporting organizations, claimed by the Linux Foundation on 9 April 2026 (https://www.linuxfoundation.org/press/a2a-protocol-surpasses-150-organizations-lands-in-major-cloud-platforms-and-sees-enterprise-production-use-in-first-year). Card-version censuses are separate measurements, kept with their frames and not averaged. Agenstry 2026-09-01 (https://agenstry.com/blog/state-of-the-agent-card): of 1,910 cards declaring protocolVersion, 65.5% (1,252) are 0.3.x and 25.5% (488) are 1.0.x. Emissar 2026-10-02 (https://emissar.ai/learn/a2a-adoption-2026): 276 cards on the Tranco top 1M (205 in v1.0 shape, 71 in v0.3 shape, 0 signed, 0 in the top 1,000 domains). APIs.io / Kin Lane 2026-09-21 (https://apievangelist.com/2026/09/21/a2a-adoption-is-421-of-27840-and-most-of-them-arrived-with-the-card/): 421 parseable cards out of 4,718 hosts probed (27,840 providers). rStation 2026-10-12 (https://rstation.ai/problems/ai_agent/papers/1): 661 cards on 2,164 x402 seller hosts (189 pass their attributed version and fail a check that assumes 1.0).).\n- Choose AITP (Agent Interaction & Transaction Protocol) when your question is “How do two agents representing different, mutually untrusted people or businesses (e.g. a personal assistant and an airline's booking agent) talk to each other, exchange forms and payment requests, and not just plain text?” and you accept its maturity: status \"Version: 0.1.0. Status: Draft. \"AITP is a spec in progress and we are open to comments, feedback, and contributions\" (project's own words)\", implementation prototype (NEAR AI (agents built on the NEAR AI Hub are claimed to 'support all AITP features')).\n\nGuidance is derived from the two records (question, status, implementation, prerequisites, pairings), not from opinion. Each record's page carries its numbered references.\n\n## Read the full articles\n\n- [Agent2Agent Protocol](/protocols/a2a/): How do two independent agents, built on different frameworks, discover each other and delegate a task to completion?\n- [AITP (Agent Interaction & Transaction Protocol)](/protocols/aitp/): How do two agents representing different, mutually untrusted people or businesses (e.g. a personal assistant and an airline's booking agent) talk to each other, exchange forms and payment requests, and not just plain text?\n\nAsk the MCP server to compare any two: the compare-protocols prompt, or get on both ids. [Connect](/connect/).\n\n[a2a.json](/data/protocols/a2a.json) · [aitp.json](/data/protocols/aitp.json) · [Markdown](/compare/a2a-vs-aitp/index.md)\n"
}