Brave Search lets AI agents pay $0.005 for each search with x402
An AI agent can make a search with Brave and pay for each request in a stablecoin, with no account and no API key.
Brave, the maker of a web browser and search engine, accepts agent payments in its Search API through x402, an open payment standard. For each request, the price is $0.005, or $5 for 1,000. Brave gave no use numbers and no test results. The company says that it pays the network fee for a short time.
How it works
The agent sends a request. Brave replies with the price and how to pay. The agent signs a payment in USDC, a stablecoin that follows the US dollar, and sends the request again. Brave then gives the results and a receipt on the Base blockchain.
The numbers
The price is the same for all of these endpoints:
- LLM Context, results made for AI agents
- web search
- news, image, video and local search
What is not known
Brave runs its payment server. It says that another network and another stablecoin will follow. It gave no adoption figures. The easy start is PurlWallet, a command line wallet that Stripe made.
Insight: One payment standard now sits at three gates
In October, Coinbase said that AWS and Cloudflare let publishers charge agents with x402. Mastercard made Agent Pay on it. At this time a search engine gives results on it for money. This looks like a race to make x402 the toll gate of the agent web, where the first standard that sellers use sets the rules. Coinbase gave no adoption numbers, and it is not proven that many use it.
Sources
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