Cloudflare moved two AI payment products into beta on Sept. 30: the Monetization Gateway, which lets sellers charge AI agents per request, and Pay Per Use, which compensates publishers when an AI company reports using their content after retrieval. Both are confirmed, dated product launches — not tool-signal speculation. Neither post, however, reports transaction counts or payouts, so commercial traction remains unmeasured.

The Gateway is in closed beta for U.S.-based sellers and buyers only. Cloudflare first announced it on July 1 and opened a waitlist; the September announcement marks the shift from waitlist to functioning beta.

Two products, two pricing models

The core distinction is who sets the price. With the Gateway, the seller decides which requests are billed and at what rate. With Pay Per Use, the AI company defines the use, sets the price, and the publisher decides whether to accept or decline.

The Monetization Gateway charges an AI agent per request and targets resources that incur usage with each call — APIs, MCP tools, datasets, and sites. It runs on the x402 protocol and the HTTP 402 Payment Required status code. When an agent tries to access a protected resource, it receives the payment terms, signs a payment authorization, and retries the request. Cloudflare's documentation says payment is processed within the request and verified before the seller's server responds.

Each monetization rule specifies domain, URL, price, and target audience. The audience can be everyone or only verified bots identified by Cloudflare's BotBase. Fixed pricing means requests with fixed inputs cost the same every time; variable pricing authorizes a maximum limit, with the seller's origin reporting the actual amount paid. Settlements start at $0.001 and prices can run up to $100.

Payments process in USDC stablecoin on the Base blockchain via Coinbase's x402 Facilitator. Cloudflare says it plans to add more payment methods.

Eligibility requirements

The Gateway's closed beta carries concrete requirements. Buyers and sellers must both be U.S.-based. Sellers need a credit card on file, a verified email address, and an account older than 60 days. The zone must be proxied through Cloudflare, be more than 30 days old, and pass zone security checks. Sellers can request access through the dashboard.

Four live implementations

Cloudflare lists four implementations already running, including its own AI Gateway. Ceramic.ai offers a web search API for agents with fixed pay-per-search pricing and no API key required — in July, Cloudflare described Ceramic as a Pay Per Use partner paying content sites when their content appears in search results; in the Gateway, it acts as the seller. Cloudflare's AI Gateway accepts payment per inference request across four open models for U.S. users. Stocktwits charges for each market signal request via a dedicated agent route. API2PDF is a PDF-generation API with variable pricing based on compute and bandwidth per request — Cloudflare notes that asking API2PDF's customers for a credit card after the first month caused a conversion drop of over 50%, a concrete argument for metered per-request billing.

How Pay Per Use works after retrieval

Cloudflare's post draws a sharp line between its programs: Pay Per Crawl "charges for access," while Pay Per Use "pays for what happens next," such as a cited answer in AI search.

The post lays out the roles directly: "Each AI company defines the use it will pay for and sets a price. Publishers decide which offers to accept, and then can see how often their content is used and what it has earned. Cloudflare handles enrollment, usage records, billing, and payment."

Each program's terms cover what the AI company may do with the content, including restrictions on training. The buyer tracks every use by reporting a timestamp, source URL, and event ID. Usage is self-reported, though program rules require complete reporting, and Cloudflare checks that each reported use matches an enrolled publisher. Cloudflare then bills the buyer and pays publishers monthly. During the beta, Cloudflare says it is working directly with each buyer and with publishers who opt in — and it is not naming the buyers.

That self-reporting structure matters for publishers. The usage data that determines your earnings comes from the buyer's own reports, and the buyer sets the price. Your leverage is limited to accepting or declining the offer.

Where this fits in the market

A Sept. 18 comparison weighed Pay Per Crawl and Pay Per Use against Google's AI contribution pilot and Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace. With the Gateway added, Cloudflare now operates three distinct payment events: Pay Per Crawl charges a crawler for each successful paid retrieval at a rate the site owner sets; the Gateway charges per request at a seller-determined rate; Pay Per Use pays out for each reported use at the AI company's offered price.

What to monitor

Cloudflare says the Pay Per Use beta will help it work out how publishers can counter a buyer's price and charge differently by use — a hint at future negotiating power for publishers. Watch whether Cloudflare names the AI companies buying through Pay Per Use, which would signal real demand. For the Gateway, the company says support for new geographies is "on the way," and additional payment methods beyond USDC are planned.