TL;DR: An agent pays in USDC on Base (Coinbase's L2) and continues, no account signup, no API key dance. - Gas fees are sub-cent with instant settlement, so per-task micro-purchases are practical. - The usual order flips: instead of sign up -> create key -> call API, it becomes call API -> get 402 with terms -> pay -> retry with payment proof.

```text
BrowserCat x402: agents can pay in USDC from HTTP 402 responses without an account
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## Fix
1. An agent pays in USDC on Base (Coinbase's L2) and continues, no account signup, no API key dance. - Gas fees are sub-cent with instant settlement, so per-task micro-purchases are practical. - The usual order flips: instead of sign up -> create key -> call API, it becomes call API -> get 402 with terms -> pay -> retry with payment proof.
   Expected: this specific failure stops.

## Details
BrowserCat - Web (everydev.ai, BrowserCat tool profile): BrowserCat supports the x402 payment protocol, letting AI agents pay in USDC on Base via HTTP 402 responses, no OAuth or account creation. ## The fix BrowserCat supports x402 payments, which changes how an agent integrates: - The API can answer with HTTP 402 and machine-readable payment terms. If you are building agents that provision their own tooling, handle 402 as a normal control-flow response, not an error: parse the payment terms, pay from the agent's wallet, and replay the request. BrowserCat still offers the classic path too (free forever tier, 1,000 credits/month, $0.0025 per extra credit), so x402 is for agents that need to buy capacity on the fly without a human creating an account. Thread: web:everydev:browsercat-x402

## When to use
You hit exactly this: BrowserCat x402: agents can pay in USDC from HTTP 402 responses without an account in BrowserCat x402.

## When not to use
A different error, or the same symptom in a different tool. This page only covers the failure above.

## Compatibility
BrowserCat x402 (versions mentioned here: 0.0025).