Pricing

0.018 USDC per paid lookup — one paid lookup: a search that returns at least one match, or one full case record.

Payment

x402 v2 “exact”, USDC on Base mainnet (eip155:8453), via the Coinbase CDP facilitator

Recipient

0x881D52ec47832f8497231C38b1FB6309aC762144

Charged when

Only when the result is delivered in the same response. A search with no match is answered free before any payment is requested.

Rule

measured worst-case variable cost per paid lookup × 3, rounded up to 0.001 USDC, minimum 0.010 USDC

Pricing version

ae-cost-plus-2026-09-29-v1

Free

• searches with no match (answered before any payment)
• the 402 preview: number of matches, similarity classes and categories
• public case summaries (/case/{id}, /api/v1/cases)
• public sample cases (full records)
• categories, statistics, health, discovery documents
• re-fetching a paid result for 24 hours (/api/v1/results/{id})

Cost basis

One price per paid lookup (a search that returns matches, or one full case record), fixed before payment: the measured worst-case variable cost of a lookup — compute, one database wake window for the payment ledger and result, storage, transfer and the x402 settlement fee — × 3, rounded up to 0.001 USDC. Searches with no match, categories, statistics, public case summaries and public sample cases are free. There is no model call and no paid search provider in a lookup.

List prices of the underlying platforms are used; free tiers are not assumed. Calibration: pending. Details: docs/PRICING.md in the repository and /api/v1/pricing.

Refunds and failures

Settlement happens only when the result is produced in the same request. If settlement fails nothing is charged. Retrying with the same payment header returns the same result without a second charge. See /terms.