Cloudflare launched Pay Per Use in beta on 30 September 2026 to bill AI companies for reported uses of publishers’ content, compared with its 2025 Pay Per Crawl product, which charges for access. Under the new programme, buyers offer a price for a defined use, publishers decide whether to accept, and Cloudflare handles billing and monthly payouts.
Key points
- Each AI company defines the use it will pay for and offers publishers a price.
- Publishers choose which offers to accept and can track reported uses and earnings by buyer and domain.
- Buyers self-report uses through one API; Cloudflare charges them and pays publishers monthly.
- Cloudflare also launched Monetization Gateway in beta for per-request charges to agents.
Pay Per Use prices downstream activity
Cloudflare outlined the plan in July 2026 and says it has since worked with buyers and content owners on the system. Its existing Pay Per Crawl product charges for access to a site. Pay Per Use instead charges when a buyer reports that content contributed to a use covered by an offer the publisher accepted.
An AI company sets up a programme by identifying its crawler, describing the use it will pay for, setting a price and connecting a payment account. Cloudflare gives the examples of a search service paying when it presents a page excerpt to a customer and a shopping agent paying when a review informs a recommendation. The latter use could trigger payment even if the customer does not read the review.
The distinction matters to the bill the buyer receives. Cloudflare says AI products retrieve far more material than they eventually use, and argues that a charge tied to use lets a buyer pay for content it has put into its product. Publishers can choose between the access-based and use-based models.
Each buyer proposes its own definition of a payable use. Cloudflare supplies the enrolment, reporting and payment system, while the buyer’s programme terms govern what it may do with the content, including any restrictions on training. A publisher can accept different offers covering different uses of the same article.
Publishers choose offers in Cloudflare’s dashboard
Publishers see the AI company, the activity it proposes to pay for and the offered price in the Cloudflare dashboard. They choose which programmes to join and can stop participating. Cloudflare says joining requires neither a change to the publisher’s origin nor a separate technical integration with each buyer.
The arrangement uses Cloudflare’s Verified bots system to identify an AI company’s crawler. Subject to a publisher’s access controls, that crawler can retrieve and index its content. A later use in an AI search answer or an agent’s output can then fall under an offer the publisher has accepted.
Once publishers have accepted an offer, the buyer obtains a list of their domains. It sends each use to Cloudflare as a line of JSON containing the time, the source URL and an event ID. A single API handles reports across participating sites, rather than requiring the buyer to build a reporting connection for each publisher.
Usage is self-reported by the buyer. Cloudflare says programme terms require complete reporting, and it checks whether each submitted use belongs to an enrolled publisher. Cloudflare then aggregates the reports, charges the buyer and pays publishers monthly through their connected payment accounts.
Cloudflare adds usage records and Monetization Gateway
Participating publishers can view reported use and earnings over time, broken down by buyer and domain. Cloudflare’s Business Insights product already gives publishers information on crawler visits. Pay Per Use is intended to give them records of subsequent activity that buyers report, alongside the payments associated with it.
Cloudflare says it is working with AI companies on further reporting, such as the keywords behind a citation, the topic of a request or the product in which content appeared, without exchanging personal data. During the beta, the company is working directly with each buyer and with publishers that opt in.
Cloudflare also launched Monetization Gateway in beta on 30 September 2026. It is aimed at sellers of APIs, tools and data for which a request itself can be the paid use, rather than a later use of retrieved content. The gateway lets sellers charge agents per request using the open x402 protocol. Cloudflare says the two products share identity, metering, pricing and analytics infrastructure.
