---
title: "Pay per crawl: definition | Agent Ready Crawlers"
description: "Pay per crawl: Cloudflare's closed-beta feature that lets a zone charge AI crawlers per request using HTTP 402, with Cloudflare as Merchant of Record."
canonical: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/glossary/pay-per-crawl
site: "Agent Ready Crawlers"
last_updated: 2026-11-04
section: "Glossary"
---

# Pay per crawl: definition | Agent Ready Crawlers

> Pay per crawl: Cloudflare's closed-beta feature that lets a zone charge AI crawlers per request using HTTP 402, with Cloudflare as Merchant of Record.

Source: https://agentreadycrawlers.com/glossary/pay-per-crawl
Site: Agent Ready Crawlers
Last reviewed: 2026-11-04

Glossary

# Pay per crawl

In short

Cloudflare's closed-beta feature that lets a zone charge AI crawlers per request using HTTP 402, with Cloudflare as Merchant of Record. The crawl saw 28 home pages answer 402, 0.3 percent of those fetched. A 402 is not proof of pay per crawl, which is in closed beta at Cloudflare. Related: What pay per crawl pays and TollBit vs Cloudflare.

## Definition

Cloudflare's closed-beta feature that lets a zone charge AI crawlers per request using HTTP 402, with Cloudflare as Merchant of Record.

## Sourced example

A crawler gets 402 with crawler-price: USD XX.XX and can retry with crawler-exact-price. [Source](https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-pay-per-crawl/), read 2026-11-04.

## How it shows up here

The crawl saw 28 home pages answer 402, 0.3 percent of those fetched. A 402 is not proof of pay per crawl, which is in closed beta at Cloudflare.

-   [What pay per crawl pays](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/guides/what-pay-per-crawl-pays/)
-   [TollBit vs Cloudflare](https://agentreadycrawlers.com/compare/tollbit-vs-cloudflare/)

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## Sources

-   [Introducing pay per crawl](https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-pay-per-crawl/) read 2026-11-04

Last reviewed 2026-11-04