Brave Search API now lets AI agents pay per query with USDC, no account or API key required
Brave Search API now accepts agentic payments via the x402 protocol
Brave has added x402 support to its Search API, letting developers and autonomous AI agents pay per request in USDC on the Base blockchain instead of managing API keys. A request without payment gets an HTTP 402 response with the price and payment details; the agent signs the payment, retries, and receives results plus a transaction receipt. Pricing stays at $0.005 per query ($5 per 1,000) across LLM Context and other endpoints, with gas fees covered for a limited time.
Brave Search API endpoints behind x402 require payment on every request rather than authentication.
- ddxv
I implemented x402 across a very heavily crawled site and have yet to see any transactions go through. Possibly it's not working, but I haven't seen any yet. Reading the x402 reddit you see other similar comments. People joking that the only people putting money into x402 are the people testing to see if x402 works.
I do want it to work, so just curious does anyone have any positive anecdotes? Can this naturally get picked up by crawlers?
- karhuton
I want to congratulate the ladies and gents who worked on defining the HTTP protocol, for their foresight of including the 402 response.
Would love to hear their thoughts and visions of what the web could be at the time.
- the_duke
This seems quite expensive.
$5 for 1000 searches. A lot of basic ChatGPT sessions can easily do 30 web searches , which would already cost $0.15 .
This brings up an interesting concern: providing search obviously isn't free. It has been financed through ads thus far. What happens when the majority of searches are done by agents?
- araarabish
Are we going to see all search engines adopting this model? Will this be the future of search engine revenue? May end up more pro-consumer than ads and tracking.
- willrshansen
Is this our way out of ad funded websites?
If I'm paying for internet already, can I just smear that out and pay for whatever website I'm looking at at the time?
- gpvos
I was wondering recently whether LLMs would finally usher in HTTP micropayments. And there we are! Let's see if it works this time.
- altilunium
I just updated my Brave browser on mobile, and it now replaces Google Search with Brave Search by default. Initially, I wanted to switch it back to Google Search, but finding the relevant setting was such a hassle that I was too lazy to bother. So, I just kept using Brave Search for my daily tasks. Surprisingly, the search results aren't that bad. At this point, I might have permanently switched from Google Search to Brave Search.
- zergrush
i just think its an extremely naive idea to move purchasing decisions to agents.