x402 runs on cents, but the money comes from a few big payments.
x402 was built for paying an API a fraction of a cent per call, and most payments look like that. But when we added up three full days of x402 payments on Base, the money told a different story: a small share of large payments, for prepaid balances and for jobs, brought in almost half of it. Here is what AI agents and their owners paid for, and what that means for limits, prices and catalogs.
Cents make the count, big payments make the money
We grouped the 994 paid sellers by their average payment:
| Average payment per seller | Sellers | Share of payments | Share of money |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under half a cent | 257 | 5.8% | 0.3% |
| About a cent ($0.005 to $0.0125) | 402 | 26.6% | 4.4% |
| $0.0125 to $0.06 | 234 | 61.5% | 28.2% |
| $0.06 to $0.60 | 82 | 5.4% | 23.4% |
| $0.60 to $6 | 16 | 0.7% | 27.2% |
| Over $6 | 3 | 0.1% | 16.5% |
94% of the payments went to sellers averaging under six cents, and together they brought a third of the money. The 19 sellers whose payments average more than 60 cents had 0.8% of the payments and 44% of the money. Half of all paid sellers average a cent or less.
What the money buys
The 45 sellers with the most money took 95% of it. We sorted them by what they sell, from their own descriptions in the Coinbase CDP Bazaar:
| What was bought | Sellers | Money | Payments | Wallets | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI models (chat, text, voice) | 6 | $1,531 (22%) | 13,533 | 157 | $0.11 |
| Token, wallet and market analysis | 6 | $1,471 (21%) | 75,640 | 762 | $0.02 |
| Prepaid balances: gateway credits, card loads, gift cards | 3 | $1,457 (21%) | 639 | 54 | $2.28 |
| Jobs for other agents or people: bounties, contract audits | 2 | $931 (14%) | 61 | 7 | $15.26 |
| Data and enrichment APIs (maps, companies, social, travel, FX) | 19 | $592 (9%) | 22,419 | 234 | $0.03 |
| On-chain actions: NFT mints and transfers | 3 | $262 (4%) | 5,296 | 449 | $0.05 |
| Developer tools | 3 | $120 (2%) | 1,968 | 58 | $0.06 |
| Not listed in the Bazaar | 3 | $171 (2%) | 4,976 | 11 | $0.03 |
Three ways of buying stand out:
- Many small calls. Token, wallet and market checks had more payments and more paying wallets than anything else: 75,640 payments from 762 wallets, at about two cents each. This is the per-call model x402 was designed for, and it reaches the most buyers.
- A balance, bought once. Gateway credits, card loads and gift cards had 639 payments, averaging $2.28, and 21% of the money. The agent pays once through x402 and then spends the balance elsewhere.
- A job. Bounties for other agents and contract audits had 61 payments from 7 wallets, averaging $15.26, and 14% of the money.
Three sellers, half the money
The money is concentrated. The three biggest sellers took 53% of it, the top 10 took 80% and the top 50 took 96%. By count it is the same: one seller, a token-verdict API at two cents, had 41% of all payments. Payments rose from 38,705 on 20 October to 59,645 on 22 October, but most of that rise was this one seller. Without it the days had 28,212, 25,423 and 32,111 payments.
Large sums often come from few wallets: the prepaid-credit seller with the most money had 25 payers, and the bounty board 4. On chain, a big customer and a seller funding its own account look the same, so read the dollars as an upper bound on what outside buyers spent.
One of the three biggest earners is marked caution in the Trust Index: its 402 names a different resource URL than the one it is listed under, the most common of the seven seller mistakes. Agents paid it anyway. Of the money, 80% went to sellers with at least one endpoint the Trust Index marks go.
What this means
- For people who give an agent a budget: one limit for every purchase doesn't fit. A cap of ten cents per payment allows almost every call but blocks the purchases behind at least 44% of the money, while a high cap lets one mistake cost a lot. Set a low limit per payment and per day for calls, and ask for approval on the phone above it. That is how the Fizzl Agent Wallet works: it pays small calls on its own and asks you about the rest.
- For sellers: per-call cents bring calls; a balance or a job brings revenue. If your service is used in bursts, consider selling a balance or a bundle next to the single call. And check your offer with x402 Doctor's free web check: even one of the biggest earners had a mistake in it.
- For catalogs: the list price says little about what a seller earns. The average payment and the number of different payers say more.
How we measure
Every hour, a read-only job reads the new blocks on Base and counts, for each payout address the Trust Index's daily scan finds in x402 offers (2,007 on Base), the USDC payments the payer signed with EIP-3009 (transferWithAuthorization, the way x402's exact scheme settles). Plain transfers, Permit2 payments, Circle Gateway batches and other chains don't count. A payment from the payout address to itself is left out, as is our own test wallet. Payers are counted by the first 40 bits of their address. The window is 20 to 22 October 2026, three days with every block read.
What it can't see: who is behind a wallet, whether a payment to a payout address was for an x402 call or for something else the seller sells, and whether it bought anything. Wallets that pay many sellers (checkers and scanners, see our earlier count) are included; they add little money: the 552 sellers paid only by such wallets received $37 together. Categories come from the sellers' own descriptions in the Coinbase CDP Bazaar, which listed 971 of the 994 paid payout addresses. The data is public: payments.json on the payments-data branch of x402 Doctor, and the totals in /api/trust/summary under onchain_payments.
Questions
How much money goes through x402?
On Base, on 20–22 October 2026, 146,474 signed USDC payments worth $6,851 reached 994 x402 sellers from 2,114 wallets: about $2,300 a day. That is Base only, and only payments signed with EIP-3009, the way x402's exact scheme settles.
What is a typical x402 price?
A cent. Half the paid sellers average $0.01 or less per payment, and 94% of all payments went to sellers averaging under six cents. The average payment was $0.047, pulled up by a few sellers whose payments average $0.60 to $18: 19 sellers, 0.8% of the payments, 44% of the money.
What do AI agents buy with x402?
Many small analysis calls (token, wallet and market checks: 75,640 payments from 762 wallets at about 2 cents), AI model calls (22% of the money), prepaid balances (gateway credits, card loads and gift cards: 639 payments averaging $2.28, 21% of the money) and jobs done by other agents or people (bounties and audits: 61 payments averaging $15, 14% of the money).
Where is the data?
payments.json on the payments-data branch of github.com/Fizzl13/x402-doctor, with per payout address and day the number of payments, the USDC amount and the payers as 40-bit address prefixes. The totals are in GET https://x402-doctor.fizzl.eu/api/trust/summary under onchain_payments. The sellers' descriptions come from the Coinbase CDP Bazaar.