Guides › Selling to AI agents, part 5
What x402 APIs charge, and what they earn
Published 5 November 2026. Prices are the live payment requests of 9,680 verified listings on Base, read that day. Earnings are per-call payments in October 2026 (the October report).
Two questions come before building a paid API for AI agents: what to charge, and whether anyone will pay. We see both sides: the price every listed endpoint asks, and the USDC that actually reaches sellers’ payment addresses. Here is what they show.
What they charge
The median x402 API asks $0.01 a call. Half ask between $0.003 and $0.02, and nine in ten ask $0.08 or less. A few ask absurd amounts, up to $1,000,000; ignore them.
| price per call | listings | delivered when bought |
|---|---|---|
| $0.001 or less | 1,194 | 83% of 1,137 |
| $0.001 – $0.005 | 2,821 | 67% of 2,683 |
| $0.005 – $0.01 | 2,496 | 66% of 2,406 |
| $0.01 – $0.05 | 2,053 | 63% of 383 |
| $0.05 – $0.10 | 456 | too few to say |
| $0.10 – $1 | 528 | too few to say |
| more than $1 | 132 | too few to say |
A higher price does not buy a better reputation: the cheapest endpoints delivered most often when we paid them. That is a fact about these sellers, not a rule, but it means price is not how agents tell good from bad. Evidence is.
Typical prices by category (median, with the middle half):
| category | listings | median | middle half |
|---|---|---|---|
| crypto data | 1,697 | $0.008 | $0.002–0.02 |
| web data | 764 | $0.01 | $0.005–0.02 |
| LLM compute | 383 | $0.01 | $0.003–0.02 |
| geo data | 360 | $0.006 | $0.002–0.01 |
| market data | 359 | $0.01 | $0.004–0.025 |
| media generation | 344 | $0.01 | $0.003–0.05 |
| weather | 296 | $0.01 | $0.003–0.05 |
| currency rates | 248 | $0.005 | $0.002–0.01 |
| news | 123 | $0.01 | $0.003–0.03 |
| stock data | 107 | $0.01 | $0.01–0.03 |
What they earn
In October, 1,536 sellers were paid $40,326 in 1.7 million per-call payments from 13,019 different wallets. Seven sellers earned more than $1,000 and took 76% of it. The median seller earned 29 cents. The October report has the full split and how it was measured.
That is the honest picture: real money, for few sellers so far. Most listed APIs earn close to nothing.
What separates the sellers who earn
The data shows two things clearly.
- They win on calls, not price. The seven sellers above $1,000 were paid about 2.6 cents a call on average, close to everyone else. What they have is volume: 1.16 million paid calls between them in one month.
- They have many customers. Every one of the top ten sellers was paid by at least 12 different wallets. A seller paid by one wallet has one customer, or is paying itself.
The arithmetic is simple. At $0.01 a call, $1,000 a month is 100,000 paid calls, about 3,300 a day. So the question is not “what can I charge?” but “what will agents call thousands of times?”: something they need often, in a loop, where a fast, correct answer saves them work.
How to price yours
- Start near your category’s median. Agents compare prices, and a price far above the rest needs evidence that you are better.
- Charge at least $0.002. Past 1,000 sales a month, the Coinbase payment service costs $0.001 a sale, so a lower price earns almost nothing in a busy month.
- Earn trust with evidence, not with a high price. A free sample, inputs described where agents read them, and a record that shows a real purchase delivered (part 3).
- Keep the listed price and the live price the same. Agents with spending limits skip an endpoint whose price changed.
The prompt
Copy this into your AI assistant to price your API against what is already listed.
Help me price my paid API for AI agents. I am a beginner: explain your reasoning in plain words. What my API does: [describe it, e.g. "returns the weather forecast for a city"]. 1. Find similar paid APIs: https://api.nohumans.directory/v1/discover?q=<what my API does, in plain words>&limit=20 2. List their prices, and which of them are verified and were bought and delivered (paid_verified, latest_purchase_delivered). 3. Tell me the median price of the ones that deliver, and how mine compares on speed, freshness and what it returns. 4. Recommend a price of at least $0.002 per call, and tell me how many paid calls a month I would need to earn $100 and $1,000 at that price. 5. Tell me what would make an agent call it often: what to add, what to make faster, what to describe better.
Sources: live payment requests of 9,680 verified nohumans.directory listings on Base (5 November 2026); our purchase records (each listing’s latest purchase, counted like the published rate); per-call USDC payments to listed payment addresses in October 2026 (method). No seller is named.
Your next step
- No idea yet? See what agents ask for, free.
- Have an idea? Build it with one prompt.
- Already built one? Make sure it delivers, then check it free and list it where agents look for paid services.
More guides
- Build your first paid API for AI agents, with one prompt
- What AI agents are looking for, and where nobody serves them yet
- Why paid APIs fail AI agents, and how to make yours deliver
- Before your agent pays an x402 API, check it
- What x402 APIs charge, and what they earn (you are here)