A year after Cloudflare let websites name the price AI companies pay to read their pages, it built a second scheme where the AI company names it. Pay Per Crawl, launched in July 2025, lets a website set the price an AI crawler pays for each page it fetches. Crawlers are the programs AI companies send out to read websites. Pay Per Use, launched on 30 September 2026, says: "Each AI company defines the use it will pay for and sets a price." The same post says usage is "self-reported".
Paying websites when AI uses their work is a good idea. The website spent the money to make what the AI is using. So far, eleven schemes say they pay websites for it, and they're built in one of two ways. Where the website sets the price, no AI company is named as paying. Where AI companies do pay, they set the price, count the usage or keep the formula to themselves.
Contents
- Cloudflare Pay Per Use Lets The AI Company Set The Price And Report Its Own Usage
- Eleven Schemes Pay Websites For AI Use, And Who Sets The Price Splits Them In Two
- Pay Per Crawl, TollBit And RSL Let Websites Set The Price, But No AI Company Is Named As Paying
- Google, Microsoft, Perplexity, ProRata And Amazon Pay Websites, And The Payer Sets The Price Or Counts The Usage
- Should Websites Accept AI Payment Deals? On These Terms, No
- Before Joining An AI Payment Scheme, Find Out Who Sets The Price And Who Counts The Usage
- A Fair AI Payment Scheme Needs A Count The Website Can Check, The Website's Price And A Named Buyer
HOW AI IS CHANGING THE INTERNET: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE POINTLESS
Nobody asked us if we wanted the internet changed. So every week I send one email about one thing AI did to it, with the receipts, and what to do about it. Sometimes the honest answer is "not yet."
From someone who pays attention to this for a living.
Cloudflare Pay Per Use Lets The AI Company Set The Price And Report Its Own Usage
Cloudflare Pay Per Use, a beta launched on 30 September 2026, lets the AI company set the price and report its own usage. It works the opposite way to Cloudflare's Pay Per Crawl, where the website sets the price.
Cloudflare is the company many websites run behind for speed and security, which puts it between those websites and the AI crawlers reading them. Pay Per Crawl launched on 1 July 2025 as a private beta, open only to websites Cloudflare lets in. The website sets one default price for every crawler it charges and can vary it by page, with a minimum of $0.001 per crawl. Cloudflare's network records a charge each time a paying crawler gets a page. Cloudflare's launch post said: "Pay per crawl grants domain owners full control over their monetization strategy."
Fifteen months later, Cloudflare's documentation says: "Pay per crawl is currently in closed beta." A website owner in Pay Per Crawl can see how often crawlers are charged, but not their earnings balance without asking. Another page of the docs says: "Your accrued earnings balance is not currently visible in the dashboard. You can request balance updates from your Cloudflare team."
In Pay Per Use, the AI company decides what counts as a use and what it will pay for it. Cloudflare gives two examples: a search service paying "when it returns an excerpt from an enrolled page", and a shopping agent paying "when an enrolled review shapes a recommendation". The website accepts the offer or declines it. The AI company then reports its own usage, and Cloudflare's post describes the check it makes: "Usage is self-reported: the program terms require complete reporting, and Cloudflare checks that each reported use maps to an enrolled publisher."
Nothing in the post says anyone checks that the report is complete. Letting a website make a counter-offer on price is listed under "What comes next", as a plan. The post names no AI company that has joined as a buyer, and no website that has been paid.
Pay Per Crawl has been in beta for fifteen months with no AI company named as a buyer. Cloudflare says why it built the second scheme: "Charging for every crawl makes the buyer pay before it knows what it needs, and many buyers won't." That may be true. It is a reason the buyer would rather set the price. It doesn't answer the website's question: how does it check what it's owed? Cloudflare still offers both, and says publishers "can choose the model that suits them."
Eleven Schemes Pay Websites For AI Use, And Who Sets The Price Splits Them In Two
Eleven schemes pay websites, or say they will, for AI access to their content or for using it in answers. Google shows its pilot's terms only to publishers inside it.
"None named" means the scheme names no AI company paying through it.
The website sets the price
| Scheme | The website is paid for | Who sets the price | Who counts the usage | AI company named as paying | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pay Per Crawl | Each crawl | The website, one default price for every crawler it charges | Cloudflare's network | None named | Closed beta since July 2025 |
| Cloudflare Monetization Gateway | Each request | The seller | Cloudflare checks each payment, settled in a stablecoin, a crypto token pegged to the dollar | None named | Closed beta, US only, since September 2026 |
| x402, an open standard for paying per request | Each request | The website, in its server settings | Each payment settles through a payment network, in practice a public blockchain | None named | Live |
| TollBit | Each request, or each use the AI company reports | The website, with negotiated discounts | TollBit's proxy, or the AI company's own report | None named | Live, free for websites |
| RSL Collective | Crawls, training or each use | The website, or terms the Collective negotiates | The AI company reports | None named | Standard published, sign-up open |
The AI company sets the price, or the scheme doesn't say who does
| Scheme | The website is paid for | Who sets the price | Who counts the usage | AI company named as paying | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Pay Per Use | Each use, as the AI company defines it | The AI company | The AI company reports | None named | Beta since September 2026 |
| Google AI contribution pilot | Content that shapes Google's AI answers | Google, method not published | Pilot with publishers Google approached, about 100 websites | ||
| Microsoft Publisher Content Marketplace | Content the AI answers are built from | Not stated | Microsoft | Microsoft Copilot, with Yahoo joining | Pilot since February 2026 |
| Perplexity Comet Plus | Visits, citations and agent actions | Perplexity, from a $5 subscription | Perplexity | Perplexity | Launched 2025 |
| ProRata Gist Answers | A share of ad revenue from answers | ProRata, a fixed 50/50 split | ProRata, method not published | ProRata | Live |
| Amazon Content Partners | Continued access to the content, paid in benefits | Amazon | Not stated | Amazon | Available since July 2026, US only |
Large publishers also sign deals with AI companies, outside any of these schemes. Cloudflare counts "More than 50 publisher-AI deals have been signed since 2023." Nearly all of them were negotiated one at a time, Cloudflare says.
Pay Per Crawl, TollBit And RSL Let Websites Set The Price, But No AI Company Is Named As Paying
Two of the five schemes in this group, Cloudflare's Monetization Gateway and x402, are general tools for charging for any request, and were not built to pay websites for content. A website could use them that way.
On 30 September 2026, the same day as Pay Per Use, Cloudflare launched the Monetization Gateway as a closed beta for US businesses. In the Gateway, the seller is in charge: "Sellers define which requests require payment, the cost, and where the payment should be sent." The post names four customers already using it, and all four sell something to AI: Cloudflare's AI Gateway sells access to AI models, Ceramic.ai sells search, Stocktwits sells market signals and API2PDF sells PDF generation.
x402 is an open way for any server to ask for a small payment before it answers a request, with the price in the website's settings. It is live, and nothing on its pages names an AI company paying websites for their content through it.
TollBit, a company that charges AI companies for access to websites, comes closest to a scheme a website could trust. The website sets its rates: "You set what AI systems pay for your content with customizable pricing options." TollBit's proxy is a server that fetches the page for the AI company and records the request. TollBit's docs say nothing is logged or billed until the page has been delivered. Both sides see the same ledger, so the website can check the count.
But TollBit also offers AI companies a second route, where they keep copies of pages and report their usage later for billing. On that route, the count is whatever the AI company sends. TollBit's FAQ says it partners with AI companies and names none. The developer docs name one, "Kernel, a TollBit AI partner", inside an example. TollBit's pages don't agree on how many websites use it either: "over 10,000" websites on one page and "over 7,000" on the FAQ. No page says which of them have been paid through TollBit.
The RSL Collective, built around the Really Simple Licensing standard, lets a website publish its licensing terms in a file written for crawlers to read, and promises "collective licensing and bargaining power". Where a website's licence asks for reports, the RSL standard says the AI company "MUST submit reports" of what it used. Reddit and Ziff Davis are quoted as supporters. No AI company is named as paying.
Google, Microsoft, Perplexity, ProRata And Amazon Pay Websites, And The Payer Sets The Price Or Counts The Usage
Five of the eleven schemes name the company paying: Google's AI contribution pilot, Microsoft's Publisher Content Marketplace, Perplexity's Comet Plus, ProRata's Gist Answers and Amazon Content Partners. In each one, the company paying sets the price, counts the usage, or both. Cloudflare's Pay Per Use sits with them: no buyer is named yet, but the terms are written for the AI company to set.
- Google has approached at least dozens of publishers about its AI contribution pilot, Digiday reported. It pays websites whose content shapes answers in AI Overviews, AI Mode and the Gemini app. Earnings show up as a monthly figure in Search Console, Google's dashboard for website owners, with no detail on how payouts are calculated. Google confirmed to Digiday that it is an early-stage pilot. The Information put the number of websites at about 100, some paid under $1,000 over several months, as reported by PPC Land.
- Microsoft launched its Publisher Content Marketplace in February 2026, promising that "publishers will be paid on delivered value". Microsoft says publishers "define licensing and usage terms" and that it provides the usage reporting. Who sets the price, and how delivered value is measured, isn't stated. The marketplace's first buyer is Microsoft's Copilot, and Yahoo is "beginning to onboard".
- Perplexity, the AI answer engine, pays publishers through Comet Plus, a $5 subscription, with the revenue going to publishers "minus a small portion for Perplexity's compute costs." It pays for human visits, citations in answers and actions by its agent, the AI that browses and acts for a user. How the money is split between publishers isn't published.
- ProRata's Gist Answers, an AI answer box publishers add to their websites, splits ad revenue from AI answers 50/50 with the publishers whose content shaped them. It calls the method "proportional attribution" and says it is "accurately and repeatably measuring how much each source actually shaped the answer." The method isn't published.
- Amazon's Content Partners program doesn't pay money for content at all. Creators who "allow Amazon continued access to their content" get a 1% boost to their affiliate commission, access to premium advertising and $100 a month in AWS hosting credits.
Should Websites Accept AI Payment Deals? On These Terms, No
If Google, Microsoft, Perplexity, ProRata or Amazon offered me money on these terms, I'd say no. If you take it anyway, treat it as money you can't check, and give nothing up to get it.
Taking the money lets the AI company say it pays websites, while it sets the price and keeps the formula to itself. You can't check what you're paid for, because the usage is whatever the payer reports. And taking a small payment tells the buyer what your content is worth. Once you've accepted a price, it's hard to raise it.
The big publishers negotiate their deals. Everyone else gets the default terms, and the default is written by the side that pays.
Before Joining An AI Payment Scheme, Find Out Who Sets The Price And Who Counts The Usage
Read the terms for two answers: who sets the price, and who counts the usage. If the answer to both is the AI company, the AI company decides what you're paid, whatever the announcement calls it.
Look at the offers without signing up for anything. If your website runs on Cloudflare, Cloudflare says Pay Per Use offers appear in the dashboard under Monetize, then Pay Per Use, with the AI company, the use it pays for and its price. During the beta Cloudflare is working directly with the publishers who opt in.
Keep the right to say no. Whatever you join, keep control of which crawlers and agents can reach your website. Don't lift an existing crawler block as a condition of joining. Charging and blocking also decide which AI tools can still read you, and so which ones can still cite you.
A Fair AI Payment Scheme Needs A Count The Website Can Check, The Website's Price And A Named Buyer
The website can check the count. Someone other than the payer measures the usage, or it is logged where the website can see it. TollBit's proxy already does this for the requests that go through it.
The website sets the price. The website names what it wants, and the AI company pays it or walks away. Pay Per Crawl was built to work this way.
A named buyer pays named websites real amounts. An AI company goes on the record, and the websites it pays say what they received.
None of the eleven schemes has all three. TollBit comes closest: on its proxy route the website sets the price and both sides see the count. No AI company is named as paying through it.
You know how some restaurants let the customer decide what the meal was worth? They exist, but they're the exception. And even there, the owner can see what you ate. Here, the payer mostly does the counting, so the website usually can't even count the plates. And with Google or Perplexity, the customer also decides whether anyone else walks in, because the AI setting the price is the same one deciding whether to send people to the website at all. I don't see why that should be the rule for websites.