# What Agents Buy

> Independent measurement of the x402 agent economy. Every USDC payment agents make on Base is swept straight off the chain daily, and the endpoints agents pay are bought from with a real wallet and graded on what actually arrives.

Written by @crowdturtle (https://x.com/crowdturtle). Site: https://whatagentsbuy.com. Feed: https://whatagentsbuy.com/feed.xml

Full text: https://whatagentsbuy.com/llms-full.txt · JSON: https://whatagentsbuy.com/api/ratings.json, https://whatagentsbuy.com/api/leaderboard.json, https://whatagentsbuy.com/api/field-notes.json

## The market, last 24 hours

- Settled: $59,908 USDC across 161,258 payments
- Services tracked: 1,922
- Measured on Base, tape runs 2026-08-04 to 2026-08-11
- Method: Base JSON-RPC USDC Transfer logs, joined to the payTo address each service advertises in its own x402 challenge. Registry call-counters are not used; they understate real volume by orders of magnitude.

### Top earners

1. Bitrefill (api.bitrefill.com) — $19,535 on 110 payments from 102 wallets (pays back out 105% of it)
2. BlockRun.AI (blockrun.ai) — $14,759 on 139,402 payments from 36 wallets
3. mcp.x402.boats (mcp.x402.boats) — $12,695 on 2,856 payments from 21 wallets (pays back out 100% of it)
4. laso.finance (laso.finance) — $4,415 on 12 payments from 7 wallets (pays back out 121% of it)
5. api.clusterprotocol.ai (api.clusterprotocol.ai) — $3,405 on 3,602 payments from 640 wallets (pays back out 102% of it)
6. api.surplusintelligence.ai (api.surplusintelligence.ai) — $3,001 on 40 payments from 7 wallets
7. x402.dtelecom.org (x402.dtelecom.org) — $1,002 on 496 payments from 23 wallets
8. mcp.x402.boats (mcp.x402.boats) — $412 on 33 payments from 12 wallets
9. test.alexwlex143.workers.dev (test.alexwlex143.workers.dev) — $83 on 981 payments from 87 wallets
10. x402.clashofcoins.com (x402.clashofcoins.com) — $82 on 11 payments from 2 wallets

## Ratings

Grades run A+ to F and apply to a named behaviour, not to a vendor, so one service can hold two. Verdicts are Honest, Overcharged, Partial, or No goods. Every rating is backed by a real payment from wallet 0xC533Bf5268A2F64aDDe58dcE380651f70Aa92D7A, verifiable on Basescan.

- **pro-api.coinmarketcap.com** — A+ on price honesty. Honest: quoted $0.01, charged $0.01, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/cmc-ten-billion
- **api.nansen.ai** — A+ on data accuracy. Honest: quoted $0.01, charged $0.01, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/nansen-audits-us
- **anywaypossible.com** — A+ on provenance. Honest: quoted $0.001, charged $0.001, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/two-wallets-one-question
- **groundcheck.seiche.info** — A+ on delivery verification. Honest: quoted $0.05, charged $0.00, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/groundcheck-delivery
- **stablememes.dev** — A on price honesty. Honest: quoted $0.01, charged $0.01, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/one-cent-meme
- **api.bitrefill.com** — A on price honesty. Honest: quoted $0.003, charged $0.003, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/bitrefill
- **blockrun.ai** — A on price honesty. Honest: quoted $0.002, charged $0.002, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/blockrun-flat-floor
- **x402.halowerk.com** — A on verification accuracy. Honest: quoted $0.002, charged $0.002, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/halowerk-settlement-verify
- **gas.apitoll.cloud** — A on value for money. Honest: quoted $0.001, charged $0.001, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/gas-three-ways
- **2s.io** — A on data accuracy. Honest: quoted $0.0025, charged $0.0025, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/five-email-checkers
- **quartermaster.surewhynot.app** — A on verification accuracy. Honest: quoted $0.003, charged $0.003, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/quartermaster-proof
- **signals.edge.report** — A- on provenance. Honest: quoted $0.001, charged $0.001, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/edge-report-balance
- **pro-api.coinmarketcap.com** — B- on symbol resolution. Graded without completing a purchase. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/ticker-squatters
- **blockrun.ai** — C on free-tier accuracy. Graded without completing a purchase. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/blockrun-free-tier
- **mcp.fortclaw.com** — C on getting in at all. Partial: quoted $0.03, charged $0.00, goods not delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/fortclaw-opaque
- **x402datasource.com** — C on data accuracy. Partial: quoted $0.01, charged $0.01, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/x402datasource-rural
- **api.thetrustlayer.xyz** — C on value for money. Partial: quoted $0.001, charged $0.001, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/trustlayer-pays-for-a-miss
- **keyronne.com** — C on billing correctness. No goods: quoted $0.003, charged $0.003, goods not delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/keyronne-bills-before-routing
- **aeml-x402.zeabur.app** — C on freshness. Partial: quoted $0.01, charged $0.01, goods delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/aeml-stale-trust
- **mcp.x402.boats** — D on getting in at all. Partial: quoted $0.10, charged $0.00, goods not delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/x402-boats
- **api.x402lint.dev** — D on grading accuracy. Graded without completing a purchase. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/grading-the-grader
- **api.jarvisclaw.ai** — F on delivery. No goods: quoted $0.001656, charged $0.003312, goods not delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/p/jarvisclaw-cannot-settle

## Field notes

Traps found while paying these endpoints, each with what to do about it.

- **A counterfeit payment address that renders identically to the real one** — 89 addresses were generated to impersonate blockrun.ai's payment address, each matching it on at least the first four and last four hex characters. Truncated the way every wallet and explorer truncates, all 89 read 0xe9030…1abf, and so does the real address. Each sent a single USDC transfer worth a millionth of a dollar, whose only purpose is to sit in the buyer's history next to a real payment and get copied by mistake. The buyer, an agent, made 732,761 payments over the same period and sent every one to the correct address, because it reads the payTo out of the 402 challenge on each call instead of remembering it. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/payto-from-challenge-not-history
- **Reputation scores cannot see a service that simply does not deliver** — Six trust services were asked about a counterparty proven to charge twice and return nothing. An OFAC screen said PASS 100. A domain scorer said 50 of 100. A reliability check measured 100% reachable and 100% valid 402s, all true. A trust index called it live and operating. Only the one that compared the delivered response against the advertised schema and the settlement receipt answered inconsistent. A broken payout path scores well on every proxy, because the website works. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/score-the-transaction-not-the-counterparty
- **A wrong method can cost you money and return a web page** — Some sellers run the paywall in front of the router, so payment settles before anything checks whether the route exists or the method is right. keyronne.com declares POST; a GET to the same path settled $0.003 and returned the site's own homepage as text/html. Called correctly it returns a clean 422 that states charged: false, so the service is fine and the ordering is not. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/paywall-before-router
- **A timestamp is not a citation. Ask for the block.** — Two sellers answered the same balance query fourteen seconds apart and returned different numbers. Both were right; the difference was a fee paid in between. Only one stamped a block number. A wall-clock timestamp tells you when their server replied, which you cannot verify and cannot reproduce. A block height pins the answer to a state anyone can re-read forever. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/cite-the-block-not-the-clock
- **Your client reporting no payment does not mean no payment** — A seller can return an error that says settlement failed while the transfer has already settled. On 2026-08-09 api.jarvisclaw.ai answered 'user settlement failed' twice and our payment client reported payment: null both times. The chain shows two transfers of $0.001656 left the wallet, one per attempt, to the exact payTo the endpoint advertises. Nothing was ever delivered. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/client-says-null-chain-says-paid
- **Most sellers put the price only in a header, not the body** — Measured across 220 origins on 2026-08-08: all 211 that answered with a parseable challenge put it in the payment-required header, and only 74 also put it in the response body. That means 63% of sellers return a 402 whose body contains no accepts[] at all. A client that parses only the body concludes most of the market is broken. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/challenge-usually-header-only
- **The cheap action is not the cheap price** — Sellers advertise a three cent action while every cheap action presupposes state you can only buy with an expensive one. FortClaw quotes $0.03 to heal a unit, but units only come from /start at $9.00. x402.boats quotes $0.10 to upgrade a ship you can only get by spending $2.00 first. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/cheap-action-expensive-entry
- **Check the free endpoint before paying the paid one** — Sellers increasingly run a free tier that answers the same question as the paid call. TrustLayer's paid /agent/{id} and its free /demo/trust/{id} returned identical found:false for the same address, and the free one carried more fields. x402lint's full scan report is free at /v1/report while the paid call only buys freshness. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/free-tier-answers-the-paid-question
- **The model you asked for is not always the model that answers** — A router's catalogue name and the weights that actually run can differ, and nothing in the request will tell you. On BlockRun, two separately listed free models, deepseek-v4-flash and step-3.7-flash, both return responses reporting nvidia/gpt-oss-120b. Neither advertised model is reachable under its own name. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/model-label-is-not-the-model
- **A listed service may not accept standard payment** — A service can publish a valid x402 quote and still refuse a standards-compliant payment, because it expects the signed payment in a header of its own choosing rather than the standard one. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/custom-payment-header
- **Money arriving is not always a sale** — Rank sellers by USDC landing at their payment address and some of the top entries are not selling anything. A game that returns stakes recycles the same pot; the inflow looks like revenue and is not. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/turnover-not-revenue
- **There is no single catalog of what agents can buy** — Coinbase and Circle both publish open registries of x402 services, and they overlap by ten hosts. Build discovery on one and your agent cannot see most of the market. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/two-registries
- **The amount is in the asset's own decimals, not dollars** — USDC uses 6 decimals. Most BNB Chain tokens use 18. Divide every quote by a million and an 18-decimal one-cent charge reads as ten billion dollars. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/decimals
- **One endpoint, several prices** — A single 402 can offer many payment options across different chains and tokens. Take the first one and you may sign for the wrong asset on the wrong chain. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/many-options
- **The payment challenge hides in three different places** — It can be in the response body as accepts[], in a payment-required header as base64 JSON, or in WWW-Authenticate, which itself has two formats. Parse only the body and a large share of the market looks broken. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/challenge-location
- **A ticker is not an asset** — Ask a market data API for BTC and you get 13 assets claiming that ticker. PEPE returns 32. Ask for SOL, take the first result, and you get Solcoin instead of Solana. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/symbol-not-coin
- **Call it the way the registry says to call it** — Send GET to a POST endpoint and you get 405, which looks exactly like a dead listing. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/declared-method
- **A changing payment address is usually fine** — Some services mint a fresh receiving address per request. Compared against a registry entry it looks like a hijacked endpoint. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/rotating-payto
- **Quotes expire, sometimes in 30 seconds** — maxTimeoutSeconds ranges from 30 to 3600 across the market. An agent that pauses to think, or a human approving a spend, can miss the window. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/quote-window
- **Many storefronts, one operator** — Listings that share a payment wallet are the same business. Count them separately and you multiply both the size of the market and any revenue you attribute. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/shared-wallets
- **Registry usage counters are not demand** — The public catalog keeps its own call counts and they are wrong by orders of magnitude, because they only see what passes through their own path. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/registry-counters
- **Price does not always scale with what you ask for** — Some endpoints charge a flat fee regardless of payload, which cuts both ways: generous on bulk requests, terrible on small ones. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/flat-pricing
- **Some paywalls sit in front of nothing** — A service can return a payment demand for a URL that does not exist, because the paywall fires before anything checks whether there is a product behind it. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/phantom-paywalls
- **A catalog fetch that stops early looks like a complete one** — Paginate a public registry, hit one network blip, break the loop, and you save a quarter of the market as though it were all of it. https://whatagentsbuy.com/notes/silent-truncation

## Reuse

Figures may be quoted with attribution to What Agents Buy and the as-of date shown above. The numbers change daily; re-read this file rather than caching them.