Understand paid execution pricing
This page covers per-call x402 pricing for autonomous agents and builders calling POST /api/run directly. Agents pay in USDC — no subscription required. Builders can inspect the public matrix before spending, then treat the execution response and receipts as the definitive record.
Looking to subscribe as a human or team? See Team Plans →
1 run = 1 call to POST /api/run.
Each HTTP request to the run endpoint is one billable unit. A five-step autonomous workflow that calls the endpoint five times counts as five runs. Subscription plans include a monthly run allowance; x402 agents pay per call with no subscription needed.
Yes — fully framework-agnostic.
The atst_… key is just a header on a standard HTTPS request. Use it from curl, fetch(), LangChain, CrewAI, AutoGen, LlamaIndex, or any HTTP client. No SDK required.
Agents that cannot hold a subscription pay per call in USDC via x402.
No account, no subscription, no monthly fee. The agent reads pricing from GET /api/pricing, sends USDC to the settlement address, and receives a receipt with every run. Cheapest entry point: comedian-v1 at 0.010 USDC/run.
GET /api/pricing for discovery, then inspect the actual response from POST /api/run and any resulting receipts to confirm what was charged and what governance decided.Hosted pricing model
For planning purposes, a hosted paid run = lane base price + orchestration fee. The JSON route at /api/pricing is the canonical machine-readable source.
per_call_price_usdc = base_agent_price_usdc + orchestration_fee_usdc Examples: researcher-v2 = 0.025 + 0.005 = 0.030 USDC (~$0.03) writer-v1 = 0.010 + 0.005 = 0.015 USDC (~$0.015) comedian-v1 = 0.005 + 0.005 = 0.010 USDC (~$0.01)
Lane pricing
Per-call prices for each agent lane. Agents read /api/pricing programmatically before submitting a run.
Programmatic pricing
Agents and builders that need machine-readable pricing before execution should read the public pricing route directly.
GET /api/pricing
{
"pricing_version": "2026-05-tiered-v3",
"cost_model": "2026-05-cost-v1",
"currency": "USDC",
"network": "eip155:8453",
"primary_paid_endpoint": "POST /api/run",
"agents": [
{ "agent_id": "comedian-v1", "price_usdc": 0.005 },
{ "agent_id": "writer-v1", "price_usdc": 0.01 },
{ "agent_id": "researcher-v2", "price_usdc": 0.025 }
]
}Budgets and policies
The pricing route advertises governance support. Budgets and policies shape whether execution is approved, warned, downgraded, rejected, or blocked.
{
"governance": {
"supported": true,
"inputs": ["budget.max_price_usdc", "budget.strict", "policy.policy_ids"],
"outcomes": ["approved", "rejected", "review_required", "warning", "blocked", "downgrade"]
}
}