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7 July 2026·4 min read·NodeFlare Team

Pay-Per-Request RPC Is Live: x402 on All 23 Chains

NodeFlare now supports x402 — pay for RPC calls in USDC on Base with no account or API key. $0.001 per call, heavy methods included, listed in the x402 Bazaar for AI agents.

Starting today you can pay for NodeFlare RPC calls per request, in USDC, with no account and no API key. We've implemented x402, the open HTTP payment protocol started by Coinbase and now stewarded by the x402 Foundation — and it works on every chain we serve we serve, from Ethereum and Base to chains where independent RPC is genuinely hard to find, like Robinhood Chain, Plasma, Ink and Zircuit.

Why pay per request?

API keys and monthly plans make sense for humans running sustained workloads. They make much less sense for AI agents — an agent researching a DeFi position might need thirty RPC calls across four chains, once, right now. Signing up for four providers, verifying an email and pasting keys into config files is exactly the kind of friction agents can't handle.

With x402 the flow is three HTTP requests:

  1. POST your JSON-RPC call to https://rpc.nodeflare.app/{chain}/x402 — the response is 402 Payment Required with the price and payment details in a header.
  2. Your client signs a USDC authorization for that amount (a few lines with @x402/fetch).
  3. Retry with the payment header. We verify, serve the call from our own bare-metal nodes, settle on-chain, and return the result with the settlement transaction hash in the response.

No registration. No key management. The payment is the authorization.

Pricing

Prices follow the same compute-unit weights as our plans, at 1 CU = $0.00001 with a $0.001 minimum per request:

  • eth_blockNumber, eth_call, or any standard read: $0.001
  • One eth_getLogs or trace_* call: $0.001
  • A batch of 20 × eth_getLogs: $0.015

Heavy methods (eth_getLogs, trace_*, debug_*) — normally gated behind a key — are simply included. And you only pay for calls that succeed: if our upstream fails, nothing settles.

Built for agent discovery

Every NodeFlare x402 endpoint is listed in the x402 Bazaar, Coinbase's catalog of paid HTTP services. Agents query the Bazaar (including over MCP), find an endpoint that serves the chain they need, and pay for it — autonomously, end to end.

That matters most on young chains. If your agent needs Robinhood Chain, Plasma, BOB or Zircuit data today, the list of providers is short — and the list of providers an agent can pay without a signup form is shorter still. We're there first.

Try it in 60 seconds

Terminal
npm install @x402/fetch @x402/evm viem
TypeScript
import { wrapFetchWithPaymentFromConfig } from "@x402/fetch";
import { ExactEvmScheme } from "@x402/evm";
import { privateKeyToAccount } from "viem/accounts";

const account = privateKeyToAccount(process.env.PRIVATE_KEY); // needs USDC on Base
const pay = wrapFetchWithPaymentFromConfig(fetch, {
  schemes: [{ network: "eip155:8453", client: new ExactEvmScheme(account) }],
});

const res = await pay("https://rpc.nodeflare.app/robinhood/x402", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  body: JSON.stringify({ jsonrpc: "2.0", id: 1, method: "eth_blockNumber", params: [] }),
});
console.log(await res.json());

The wallet only needs USDC on Base — gas is covered by the payment facilitator.

When a free key is still better

x402 settlement adds roughly one Base block (~2 s) to each paid call, and $0.001/call adds up under sustained load. If you're making thousands of calls a day, a free NodeFlare key gives you 2,000,000 compute units per month, WebSocket, and lower latency — no credit card. x402 is the on-ramp for everything that can't or won't sign up.

Full details in the x402 docs. Questions: [email protected] or Discord.