thirdweb vs Privy (2026)

What sets it apart A packaged ERC-4337 account abstraction stack (bundler plus paymaster for gas sponsorship) paired with email, social, and passkey wallet onboarding, letting apps offer gasless, familiar sign-in flows rather than requiring users to hold a self-custodied wallet first

Best for Developers and small teams building consumer-facing web3 apps who want managed wallet onboarding, account abstraction, and contract/RPC infrastructure without running that plumbing themselves · Pricing model Tiered subscription with usage-based infrastructure charges. A Growth plan is priced at $99/month; a Pro plan is quoted starting around $1,499/month with negotiated volume discounts and enterprise support. An entry-level Starter tier exists below Growth, and add-ons (such as a cloud-host option) are available.

thirdweb sells onchain development infrastructure: TypeScript SDKs, wallet APIs, prebuilt smart contracts, and RPC access for building applications on EVM chains and Solana. Its account abstraction stack bundles an ERC-4337 bundler, a paymaster for sponsoring gas, and smart-contract wallets, so developers can onboard users through email, social login, or passkeys and cover their transaction fees. Pricing is tiered, with a Growth plan at $99 per month and a Pro plan quoted from roughly $1,499 per month for higher rate limits and support. As of 2026 the company has reframed its homepage around infrastructure for AI agents that transact onchain, though the underlying wallet and contract tooling is the same.

Sources thirdweb homepage · thirdweb Wallets product page · thirdweb SDK docs - Accounts & Wallets · thirdweb Account Abstraction docs

What sets it apart Key custody built on 2-of-3 Shamir secret sharing executed inside trusted execution environments, rather than a single client-held key or an external wallet client

Best for Developer and fintech teams that need to provision self-custodial wallets and user authentication directly inside their own app or website · Pricing model Free Developer tier includes 50K signatures and $1M in monthly transaction volume. Paid Scale plans run $299/month (500-2,499 monthly active users) and $499/month (2,500-9,999 MAU). Enterprise pricing is custom, with per-signature/per-wallet options cited from about $0.001 per signature.

For app developers, Privy provisions embedded self-custodial wallets alongside authentication, letting end users sign in by email, social login, or passkey and receive a wallet without a browser extension or a seed phrase. Its custody model splits each private key using 2-of-3 Shamir secret sharing and reconstructs it inside trusted execution environments, which separates it from wallet libraries that keep a single key on the client. The product suits teams building consumer crypto and stablecoin apps, spanning a free usage-based tier and paid Scale plans that begin at $299 per month. Stripe agreed to acquire the company in June 2025, and it continues to ship under the Privy name.

Sources Privy - homepage (product positioning, hardware-isolated key management, developer/enterprise audience) · Privy - Pricing · Privy Docs - Embedded wallets overview · Privy Blog - How Privy embedded wallets work