Cloudflare Launches Pay Per Use Beta for AI Content Licensing

Summary

Cloudflare has launched the beta of Pay Per Use, a system designed to let AI companies pay publishers when their content is used downstream rather than merely crawled. An AI company defines a paid use, sets a price, identifies its crawler, and connects a payment account. Publishers review offers in Cloudflare’s dashboard, choose whether to participate, and can leave an arrangement later; program terms can also restrict how content is used, including training. Buyers report each use through a single API with the time, source URL, and event ID, while Cloudflare checks that the use maps to an enrolled publisher, aggregates the records, bills buyers, and pays publishers monthly. The model covers uses such as an excerpt appearing in an AI search answer, a passage entering a research agent’s report, or a review influencing a shopping recommendation. Cloudflare says paying for use may give buyers access to content that is otherwise blocked or paywalled, while avoiding thousands of separate integrations and contracts. Publishers can view reported uses and earnings by buyer and domain, and the company is working toward providing more context about each use without exchanging personal data. The beta is being developed with participating buyers and publishers, with longer-term plans for self-service onboarding, counteroffers, and pricing that varies by use and content age. Cloudflare positions Pay Per Use alongside its Pay Per Crawl product and the separate Monetization Gateway, which charges agents per request through the x402 protocol.