Every B2B data API you've ever signed up for assumes there's a human at the other end. You create an account, you add a credit card, you get an API key, you copy it into an env var. The model works because the transaction between you and the vendor is a human-scale event: one account per company, one invoice per month, one dashboard to log into when the bill looks wrong.
It does not work for agents.
When a ChatGPT Operator or a Claude-powered SDR agent needs to verify one email address right now, there is no account to sign up for. No credit card to file. No dashboard for the agent to check. The human operator — the person who spun up the agent — is not sitting at a keyboard waiting to provision access. The agent just needs to hit an endpoint, prove it paid, and get the answer.
That's what [x402](https://github.com/coinbase/x402) solves. HTTP already has the status code (402 Payment Required, reserved since 1996 for exactly this). What it lacked was a settlement layer. USDC on Base provides one: a signed [ERC-3009 transferWithAuthorization](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-3009) travels in an HTTP header, a facilitator (we use Coinbase Developer Platform) verifies + settles on-chain, and the API returns the paid response. No account on either side.
What we shipped
[api.bavlio.com](/developers/x402) now exposes five B2B data endpoints as pay-per-call x402 endpoints: email verify ($0.005), email validate ($0.003), email find ($0.010), LinkedIn URL discovery ($0.008), and prospect search ($0.012). The merchant address is a CDP Server Wallet — no seed phrase, no device custody, managed via API key. The network is Base mainnet. The facilitator handles KYT + OFAC screening automatically.
Discovery is catalog-driven. We ship a skill definition to [AgentCash](https://github.com/Merit-Systems/agentcash-skills) so agents can invoke us from their tool manifest. We list on [x402scan](https://x402scan.com/resources), [x402.direct](https://x402.direct), and the x402 Bazaar — each returns the live endpoint list + pricing straight from `api.bavlio.com/openapi.json` (which now includes per-endpoint `x-agent-examples` and a top-level `x-payment-merchant-address` for programmatic discovery).
Why this is a different product from our SaaS API
It would have been easier to wrap the existing SaaS API in x402 middleware. But the two products serve different audiences, and conflating them would have made both worse.
The SaaS API assumes you are a Bavlio customer on a plan. You want dashboards, audit logs, predictable monthly cost, and credits that roll up under your workspace. Usage is stateful — we know it's you, we track your quotas, we send you a receipt.
The x402 API assumes you are an agent or the developer of one. You want one signed request to return one paid answer, deterministic latency, no account, and a protocol that any other agent using the same catalog can also consume. Usage is stateless — we don't know which agent sent the request, we don't need to, and per-call billing means you never over-pay for unused monthly quota.
Both live at [bavlio.com/developers](/developers) side-by-side. Pick by integration style, not by which data you need.
What this means in practice
If you're building an agent and want to hit our endpoints today: grab the x402 Python client (`pip install x402[fastapi]`), point it at `api.bavlio.com`, and it will handle the 402 negotiation + signing + retry automatically. The first call from a funded CDP wallet settles within ~3 seconds. Full example on the [x402 API docs page](/developers/x402).
If you're a human customer and prefer a monthly plan: the [SaaS API](/developers/api) is the right door. Same underlying data, API-key auth, credits from your Bavlio plan.
If you run a directory, scanner, or catalog for agent-native APIs: we're listed everywhere we know about. The OpenAPI spec is machine-readable, pricing is per-route, and the merchant address is stable. If you run a catalog we missed, email us and we'll submit.
What's next
The agent-native API surface is just getting started. Expect more catalogs, more endpoints, and — as the x402 ecosystem matures — cheaper per-call costs as facilitator fees compress. The bet we're making is that in 18 months, "pay per call in USDC" will be an expected option for any API that serves agents, the same way "Sign in with Google" became an expected option for SaaS signup. We'd rather be early.