Agent402 Tollbooth puts USDC prices on AI crawler requests

Havok Holdings LLC released Agent402 Tollbooth 0.10.5 on npm on Oct. 13, 2026. The MIT-licensed package requires Node 20 or later and can run as Express middleware or as a reverse proxy in front of a website or API.

The package supports x402 payments, Machine Payments Protocol challenges and a proof-of-work option for agents without wallets. Its main use is charging for access to individual pages or API requests rather than processing orders or invoices.

Tollbooth has three modes. Observe mode records traffic and identifies requests that would be charged without blocking them. Bots mode, the default enforcement mode, targets user agents such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, PerplexityBot and Bytespider. Strict mode uses browser-like request signals to distinguish people from automated clients. All mode returns HTTP 402 to visitors who do not meet a site’s free-access rules.

A local test of version 0.10.5 found that Googlebot received free responses in bots and strict modes, but received HTTP 402 in all mode. GPTBot received HTTP 402 in bots and strict modes. A curl request passed in bots mode and received HTTP 402 in strict mode. The checks rely on user-agent and request headers, which automated clients can imitate.

Site owners must set a receiving wallet address and a payment facilitator to collect USDC. A payTo address alone publishes a price but does not verify or settle payments. With the required x402 packages and a supported facilitator, Tollbooth verifies a payment, forwards the request to the origin server and settles the transaction after a successful response.

The package supports the x402.org facilitator on Base Sepolia for testing and can use other facilitators that support the selected network. Its command-line settlement mode accepts Base, Base Sepolia, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Avalanche, Celo, Sei and Monad, along with raw EVM chain IDs. The facilitator must support the operator’s chosen network.

Businesses using Coinbase can connect Tollbooth to the Coinbase CDP Facilitator with API credentials and a USDC receiving address on Base. Coinbase lists support for Base, Base Sepolia, Polygon, Arbitrum and World on EVM, as well as Solana. Tollbooth’s built-in command-line settlement mode uses EVM USDC and does not directly support Solana payouts.

Coinbase’s pricing documentation says the first 1,000 on-chain facilitator transactions each month are free, followed by a fee of $0.001 per transaction. That fee can equal the full value of a $0.001 request or half the value of a $0.002 request. Tollbooth’s standard command-line setup settles each paid request separately and does not use batch settlement.

Each payment response can offer a SHA-256 proof-of-work challenge. In a local test, solving the default 18-bit challenge took 279 milliseconds to 1.594 seconds, with a median of 818 milliseconds across five attempts on a shared Xeon server. A completed solution granted access once; replaying it returned another 402 response. Proof of work provides a free access route for agents without wallets but generates no payment for the site owner.

Tollbooth includes edge templates for Cloudflare Workers, Next.js and Docker. Its edge implementation requires a stable secret for proof-of-work tokens and normally uses a Durable Object to prevent replayed solutions. Operators can create free-access rules for approved clients or search engines.

The package has no refunds, buyer spending limits or guarantee that a crawler will pay. Sites that need search indexing should avoid all mode or explicitly exempt search crawlers, since an HTTP 402 response can block indexing.