Cloudflare has launched a beta of Pay Per Use, a system that lets AI companies pay publishers when their content is used in AI products. The move matters because AI answer engines read a publisher’s page and hand the reader a summary, so the visit and the revenue that would come with it never happens. Most publishers will never sign a licensing deal with the companies that use their work in AI products, and no company can negotiate with millions of sites. Pay Per Use is one way for the web to say “yes, if you pay.”
Under the system, a buyer offers a price for a specific use of a publisher’s content. The publisher chooses whether to accept. The buyer reports each use, and Cloudflare bills the buyer and pays the publisher. Publishers track usage and earnings in the Cloudflare dashboard, and buyers report usage through a single API. Cloudflare says the model ties the price to the value the buyer actually gets, rather than charging for every crawl. Pay Per Crawl, which Cloudflare launched in 2025, charges for access; Pay Per Use pays for what happens next. Publishers can choose the model that suits them.
Each AI company defines the use it will pay for and sets a price. Publishers review offers in the Cloudflare dashboard under Monetize → Pay Per Use, which shows the AI company, the use it pays for, and its offer price. Publishers decide whether to accept and can stop participating if an arrangement no longer works. There is no origin change or technical integration with each AI company. Each program’s terms also define what the AI company may do with the content, including any restrictions on training. Cloudflare provides the reporting and payment infrastructure.
Buyers report each use by fetching the list of domains that have accepted their offer, then reporting each use as one line of JSON: when it happened, the URL the content came from, and an event ID. Usage is self-reported. The program terms require complete reporting, and Cloudflare checks that each reported use maps to an enrolled publisher. Cloudflare aggregates reported uses, charges the buyer, and pays publishers monthly through their connected payment account. Buyers get one integration; publishers get one place to see offers and earnings.
Cloudflare says the system addresses a mismatch in AI products, which fetch far more than they use. A search engine indexes pages it never shows. Charging for every crawl makes the buyer pay before it knows what it needs, and many buyers won’t. Pay Per Use lets buyers make an offer, pay only for content their product actually uses, and be identified to every publisher as a verified buyer. One API connects them to every site that says yes, without thousands of integrations or individually-negotiated contracts. For publishers, the content that changes fastest—news, research, specialist trade publications—is often behind a block or a paywall today.
During the beta, Cloudflare is working directly with each buyer and with publishers who opt in. The question is whether both sides want to keep going. Buyers need content that improves their products at a price that works; publishers need a return that makes participation worthwhile, reporting they can trust, and payments that arrive on time. Cloudflare says it is working with AI companies to report more context about each use, such as the keywords that led to the citation, the topic of the request, or the product it powered, with no personal data being exchanged. Over time, Cloudflare wants new buyers to onboard with their own products and payment models without rebuilding enrollment, reporting, and settlement for each publisher. For publishers, that means one place to accept or decline offers, counter on price, and price content differently by use. Cloudflare also launched Monetization Gateway in beta, which lets sellers charge agents per request using the open x402 protocol. Both run on the same foundations: identity, metering, pricing, and analytics.
