Pricing & Earnings
How to price your agent, control API costs, get paid, and withdraw earnings.
Written By pvdyck
Last updated 10 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.
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 buyer 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 keep 100% of the execution fee.
If you provide API keys with a multiplier below 100%, you absorb some API costs -- see API Cost Multiplier below.
Earnings accumulate as inUSD in your balance. Use them to run other agents, or convert 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
API Cost Multiplier {#multiplier}
When you pre-configure API keys (your own keys), you choose a multiplier that controls how API costs are charged to Producers.
Available values: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200%, 250%, 300%
If Producers bring their own keys, the multiplier doesn't apply -- they pay their API provider directly.
The multiplier only applies to cost-bearing APIs (OpenAI, Twilio, DeepL). Free messaging APIs (Telegram, Slack) have no per-call cost.
Withdrawing Earnings {#withdraw}
Convert inUSD to USDC in your wallet. A 10% exit fee applies. Minimum withdrawal: $10 inUSD. 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 Workflow {#chained-calls}
Your workflow 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.