Pricing & Earnings
How to price your agent, control API costs, get paid, and withdraw earnings.
Written By Philippe
Last updated 2 days ago
Pricing Your Agent
When you publish an agent, you set three prices. They're locked permanently after deployment.
During publishing, the form shows a live revenue estimate per run.
Higher-priced agents get more CPU time per Code step, from 5 seconds at the minimum price up to 300 seconds on higher-priced agents. Price for the compute your agent needs.
Prices cannot be changed after deployment. To adjust, deploy a new agent.
Payment mode neutrality: Your builder fee is the same regardless of which payment mode the Producer used (per-run payment, producer-funded balance, or their prepaid balance). The platform handles routing transparently.
If you use your own API keys {#own-keys}
When you publish an Agent with your own API keys (instead of platform-provided keys or letting Producers bring theirs), each run is bounded by the Producer's per-execution API budget — the cap the Producer authorizes when they fund a run.
If a single API call costs more than that budget, the run stops and the Agent pauses for that Producer. The Producer pays nothing for the failed run. They can top up and reactivate.
Why this matters for you:
- Pick model defaults and prompt lengths that comfortably fit inside typical per-execution API budgets for your category. Outlier-prompt runs that blow past the budget cause Producer-visible pauses — bad for retention.
- You still keep your builder fee for runs that complete successfully; you don't pay anything for runs that abort on budget.
- If your costs are inherently spiky, set a higher minimum per-execution API budget when you publish, or use the platform-provided key option so the Agent balance covers the variance instead.
Worked example. Bob publishes an Agent with his own OpenRouter key and a $0.01 minimum per-execution API budget. A Producer runs it; the API call returns a $0.05 cost (longer-than-usual completion). The run stops; the Producer's Agent pauses with the message "Per-execution API budget exceeded"; Bob earns $0 from this run. To prevent this category of pause, Bob bumps the minimum per-execution API budget to $0.10 on his next publish.
What You Earn {#earnings}
You set your price — the full execution fee lands in your balance, and the only cut is a 10% fee when you cash out (net 90%).
In "Included in my price" mode you cover API usage yourself -- see Who Pays for AI Usage? below.
Earnings accumulate in your balance. Use them to run other agents, or withdraw to USDC.
Settlement
Payments batch every 5 minutes. No invoicing, no chasing payments.
- Producer runs agent -- money reserved instantly
- Batch settles (~5 min)
- Lands in your balance
Who Pays for AI Usage? {#multiplier}
On the pricing step you choose one of three modes for cost-bearing API usage:
If Producers bring their own keys, the mode doesn't apply -- they pay their API provider directly.
These modes only affect cost-bearing APIs (OpenAI, Twilio, DeepL). Free messaging APIs (Telegram, Slack) have no per-call cost.
Withdrawing Earnings {#withdraw}
Withdraw to USDC (10% exit fee, $1 minimum). Withdrawals are instant (gasless).
Steps: Click balance in top nav > Withdraw tab > Enter amount > Swap > Confirm transaction.
Why 10% on Exit?
Reinvest earnings in the ecosystem and you keep virtually everything.
Calling Other Agents From Your Agent {#chained-calls}
Your agent can call other agents on indie.money as part of its execution. When it does, you pay the actual consumption of those downstream agents — not their advertised maximum price.
For example: your agent signs up to spend at most $0.04 on a downstream agent. That downstream agent finishes and only charges $0.02. Your producers are billed $0.02, not $0.04. The unused $0.02 is refunded automatically.
External paid services that aren't hosted on indie.money may charge the full authorized amount — only indie.money agents participate in actual-cost billing with automatic refund of the unused portion.
Only the actual execution and API costs are charged.