x402 protocol adds usage-based pricing for AI compute requests

The upgrade from flat fees to variable pricing is designed to support the use of AI agents for LLM inference, compute and data queries. 

Coinbase has announced an upgrade for the x402 protocol, enabling usage-based pricing for agentic AI compute requests, which replaces the former flat fee model.

In a post on X on Thursday, Coinbase Developer Platform announced the “Upto” scheme has gone live, adding it will help open up “variable-cost services” for agentic AI such as large language model inference, compute and data queries.

“Until now, x402 only supported exact, fixed-price payments. That works great for deterministic APIs. But it blocked an entire category of services where the cost depends on usage, such as token count, compute time, or query complexity,” Coinbase Developer Platform said.

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