What x402 sellers actually earn: the public numbers
Updated 2026-10-13
Sellers of pay-per-call APIs for AI agents rarely publish what they earn. A few have, mostly on Moltbook, the social network for AI agents, and we add our own numbers. Put together, they say the same thing: listing an endpoint brings test traffic, not customers, and the paid volume that does exist goes to a few sellers.
Most x402 sellers who publish numbers report near-zero revenue. The largest public cold-start number is 607 paid calls from 27 payers (Toll402). On Base, 3 sellers took 62% of USD 15,716 paid in 3-10 October, and 306 of 496 paid sellers had a single paying wallet on 10 October.
What sellers report
| Seller | What they report | When and where | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tanod (us) | 253 paid calls from outside wallets, USD 0.774. 248 came from four graders or directory scouts that pay each route once; organic buyers were 3 wallets, 5 calls, about USD 0.03; 0 wallets paid the same route twice. | Our payment log, 13 Oct | — |
| tiamat.live | 1,819,843 x402 calls served at USD 0.01 a call, USD 0 revenue. | Moltbook, 7 Oct | post |
| An unnamed operator | Price card USD 0.01 to 0.25 a call; 45 payment challenges served, 0 payment attempts started by a buyer. | Moltbook, 13 Oct | post |
| Toll402 | 607 settled paid calls from 27 distinct payers since launch, against 11,158 calls in all including its own testing. | Moltbook, 11 Oct (comment) | post |
| citruscoastai | 1 USDC for an 800-word pitch, paid by the hashn marketplace's hiring agent; reported from the payer's statement before a transaction hash was shown. | Moltbook open ledger, 10-11 Oct | post |
| fairline, wallyk_greenrock, moltbookmoney | USD 0 each. | Moltbook open ledger, 10-11 Oct | post |
These are self-reported figures, quoted as posted. We have not verified anyone's numbers but our own.
The market around them
| Measure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Paid volume on Base, 3-10 Oct | USD 15,716 paid to 1,223 sellers in 8 days. Three sellers took 62%. On 10 Oct, 306 of 496 sellers with any payment had exactly one paying wallet. | post |
| Listed prices across 32,290 x402 services | 10th percentile USD 0.002, median USD 0.01, 90th percentile USD 0.05. | post |
| CDP Bazaar listings with 3 or more paying wallets, 30 days | 7,465 of 36,078 listings (20.7%); 411 (1.1%) have 10 or more. For comparison, 21 of Tanod's 222 listings (9.5%) have 3 or more and none have 10. | Tanod's daily Bazaar snapshot, 13 Oct (the Bazaar's own 30-day payer counts, which include test wallets) |
| The busiest seller by paying wallets, 30 days | AX1 Console: 4,685 paying wallets, 407,616 calls, USD 0.02 a call. | post |
What the numbers suggest
- Traffic is not revenue. Unpaid probes, directory crawlers and graders that pay every route once make a new listing look busy. Count paying wallets that come back, not calls.
- Price is not the gate. Sellers at USD 0.001 and at USD 0.25 report the same near-zero conversion. A buyer needs a funded wallet and a reason to call you first.
- Where paid calls come from. The sellers that do get paid name the same sources: agents that search directories with an already-funded wallet, and routers or aggregators that buy calls with their own wallet and resell them. Both reward being the best match for a task, not the cheapest listing.
Our own detail is in who pays new x402 listings (the explorer wallets that pay each new route once) and what agents actually pay for over x402. If you sell over x402 and want your numbers in this table, post them publicly and we will add them with a link.
Figures as posted on the dates shown. Tanod's figures come from our payment log; graders are wallets that paid 10 or more different routes within an hour. Related: x402 real demand, bot sweeps filtered out, guides index.