Pricing and payments
Discover and inspect are free. Each run has a fixed price of $0.001, $0.005 or $0.01, paid in USDC on Base Sepolia over x402, and only a successful run is charged.
Prices
| Tier | Price per call | Atomic units | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
local | $0.001 | 1000 | Keyless or local tools: Wikipedia, arXiv, package registries, time zones |
standard | $0.005 | 5000 | Standard keyed tools: Google results, page reads, weather, text AI |
premium | $0.01 | 10000 | Live search with page content, cited answers |
Every tool shows its price in discover, inspect and the catalog as price: {usd, atomic, tier, network}. USDC has 6 decimals, so 1000 atomic units are $0.001. The list of tools per tier is in Tools.
discover, inspect, GET /v1/catalog, GET /v1/version and GET /v1/health are free and need no wallet.
Payment
| Setting | Value |
|---|---|
| Protocol | x402 v2, scheme exact |
| Network | eip155:84532 (Base Sepolia, a testnet) |
| Asset | USDC, 0x036CbD53842c5426634e7929541eC2318f3dCF7e |
| Pay to | 0x8164dabAfc824322221654ED421715FdaA66948D |
| Authorization lifetime | 60 seconds (maxTimeoutSeconds) |
| Test funds | faucet.circle.com, Base Sepolia. No ETH needed. |
The handshake
POST /v1/run/{provider}/{endpoint} without a payment answers 402 Payment Required. The PAYMENT-REQUIRED header (base64 JSON) carries the scheme, network, asset, exact amount and payTo.
Your x402 client signs that requirement and sends the same request again with a PAYMENT-SIGNATURE header.
The gateway verifies the signature and runs the tool.
If the run returns 200, the gateway settles the payment. The PAYMENT-RESPONSE header carries the settlement, including the Base Sepolia transaction hash (view it on https://sepolia.basescan.org/tx/<hash>).
When you are not charged
Settlement happens only after a 2xx answer. Any other status cancels it, so the signed authorization is never submitted:
| Outcome | Status | Code |
|---|---|---|
The lookup found nothing (found: false) | 404 | (an envelope, not an error) |
| The input does not match the tool's schema | 422 | invalid_input |
| The body is not JSON | 400 | invalid_json |
| The provider failed or answered something unreadable | 502 | provider_error, output_contract |
| The provider rate-limited Akashi | 429 | provider_rate_limited |
| The tool did not finish in time | 504 | deadline_exceeded |
| The tool is not configured on this server | 503 | tool_unavailable |
| The gateway could not reach the tool router | 502 | relay_failed, gateway_error |
An id that is not in the catalog answers 404 unknown_endpoint before any payment is asked for.
A result served from cache (cached: true) is a successful run and costs the tool's normal price.
Capping what you spend
Price each call before you pay: the 402 states the exact amount. The clients enforce caps before they sign:
- CLI and MCP:
AKASHI_MAX_ATOMIC_PER_CALL(default10000, $0.01) andAKASHI_MAX_TOTAL_ATOMICper process or MCP session (default100000, $0.10). See CLI overview. - Your own code: a
paymentRequirementsSelectorthat refuses amounts above your limit, as in From code (HTTP). - Agent chat: at most $0.01 per call from your wallet; the demo credit has its own daily limit.
In the browser (agent chat)
Try Akashi without installing anything. A chat agent finds, inspects and runs tools for you, paid with demo credit or your own wallet.
How it runs on Pocket
Akashi is one registered Pocket Network service. A paid run travels as a real Pocket relay, from Akashi's staked application to Akashi's supplier, and the claims and proofs settle on Pocket Beta.