Pay per crawl

Handle 402 Payment Required from a site that prices access, with crawler-price headers compatible with Cloudflare pay per crawl.

A site can put a price on some actions for some agents. The headers follow Cloudflare's pay-per-crawl convention, so an agent that already handles it works unchanged.

Note

AgentGate signals prices only. It processes no payment: the site operator settles out of band from the decision log. Built-in settlement is planned.

The price

A priced request without an acceptable offer is answered:

HTTP

HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
crawler-price: USD 0.01
crawler-error: MissingCrawlerPrice

Accepting the price

Retry with one of these headers:

Header	Meaning
`crawler-exact-price: USD 0.01`	must equal the price (value and currency)
`crawler-max-price: USD 0.05`	the most you will pay; you are charged the listed price, not your maximum

Your Web Bot Auth signature must cover the header you send, for example by adding "crawler-exact-price" to the covered components. Unverified agents cannot pay. On success the response carries the amount charged:

HTTP

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
crawler-charged: USD 0.01
AgentGate-Receipt: eyJhbGciOiJFZERTQSIs…

The decision is recorded with the label agentgate:agent:payment:accepted, which the operator uses for settlement; the signed receipt is your proof of what was charged.

Errors

`crawler-error`	Status	Meaning
`MissingCrawlerPrice`	402	no offer sent
`InvalidCrawlerExactPrice`	402	the exact offer differs from the price (value or currency)
`InvalidCrawlerMaxPrice`	402	the maximum is below the price
`InvalidCrawlerPriceValue`	400	not `CUR 0.00`
`ConflictingPriceHeaders`	400	both offer headers sent
`StrongAuthRequired`	400 or 402	the offer is not covered by a signature, or you are not verified

Behind the nginx gateway, the price travels in the same headers and the status is 402 (the check answers 403 with reason payment_required and the example configuration turns it into 402).