How to charge AI crawlers
If the site is on Cloudflare, Pay-per-Crawl is the short path. If not, a Worker or middleware that answers HTTP 402 with crawler-price (x402). robots.txt and llms.txt must state the same policy. AEO cites you; 402 pays you. Completo is the paid report, not a hosting pack.
Cloudflare Pay-per-Crawl, x402, and headers only
| Path | When | What the agent sees | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pay-per-Crawl | The origin already sits behind Cloudflare. | Per-crawl price in Cloudflare’s product. | Cloudflare beta. Defaults change on 15 September 2026. |
| HTTP 402 / x402 Worker | You are not on Cloudflare, or you want 402 in your Worker. | 402, crawler-price in USD, PAYMENT-REQUIRED. | You settle. ChargeReady does not collect USDC from bots. |
| Headers + llms.txt only | You cannot ship a Worker yet. | crawler-price and Offer JSON-LD. The agent reads the price. | Signal. Without 402, charging does not execute. |
What you can do this week, with no hosting password
- Decide whether you charge per request or per response and write down a micro price, for example USD 0.01.
- Publish the price in JSON-LD Offer and in the Para agentes section of llms.txt.
- Let humans and search bots through (Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, Applebot).
- If you can, return 402 on a content route for agents, not on the whole site.
- Measure again on ChargeReady. Completo is the paid report.
Live demo on this origin
ChargeReady does not 402 the guide pages. On /api/agent/excerpt a non-search agent User-Agent, or Accept: text/markdown, gets 402 with crawler-price USD 0.01. Search crawlers stay on 200. There is no ledger here.
Open the 402 demo · offer.json (price and currency) · /api/agent/excerpt
The gap is on your origin, not a marketplace
Agents already request HTML. Without 402 that request does not pay hosting. Paste the URL: the score says whether this origin can charge. Completo is the paid report (USD 19.50 until 15 September 2026, before 39). Fix Pack is not Completo’s twin.
Questions
- Is pay per crawl setup the same as x402?
- No. Pay-per-Crawl is Cloudflare’s product. x402 is a protocol on HTTP 402. Both publish a price per request. ChargeReady measures whether your origin shows those signals.
- Does ChargeReady charge agents for me?
- No. Humans buy Completo on Gumroad. This origin has a 402 demo with a price. We do not settle USDC or run a marketplace of agent-to-agent payments.
- Do search bots pay too?
- Not under this policy. Search and answer stay on 200. 402 is for non-search agents, on a sample route.
AEO and GEO do not charge. Read the difference. · What the agentic economy is for a site owner. · See real scanner scores.