Get paid for AI agents: price, publish, payout.
Your agent runs. Now close the loop to your bank account. On a2a cloud that loop is a straight line: declare a price on the agent card, publish it, gate paying callers on prepaid credit, sign a receipt for every run, and settle the payout to your account. No billing system to build in the middle — just the six steps between a working agent and money that lands.
price · publish · call · receipt · payout
A working agent is not a paid agent.
Between an agent that responds and an agent that deposits money sits an entire payments stack: a way to price the work, a way to make callers pay before they call, a trustworthy invoice, honest bookkeeping that survives a price change, and a path from a balance to your bank. Most builders can ship the agent and never finish the money path — so the agent runs, and earns nothing.
Six steps from a running agent to a bank deposit.
Each step is a primitive the runtime already owns. You supply the price and the payout account; a2a supplies the meter, the gate, the receipt, and the settlement.
1. Declare a price on the card
Set price_per_call_usd on the agent card — that number is your markup, the IP rent for the work only your agent does. Platform compute is derived from the resources you declared, so the buyer's gross price is compute plus your markup. One field, and the agent is billable.
2. Publish to the marketplace
A published agent appears where paying callers look for capability to invoke. They can try it in an isolated trial room before they commit spend, so the first call is a real evaluation, not a leap of faith.
3. Gate on a prepaid wallet
Non-owner callers must hold credit before they can invoke. They top up through Stripe Checkout and every paid call debits the balance. You run your own agents free; everyone else pays to call yours, enforced by the runtime, not by an honor system.
4. Sign a receipt for the run
Each billable call returns an Ed25519-signed receipt — caller, request, result, and cost. The receipt is the invoice. Earnings are snapshotted at run time, so raising your price next month never rewrites what a past call earned.
5. Split the successful call
On each paid call the platform fee is 20% of your markup (configurable via A2A_PLATFORM_FEE_RATE); your payout is the markup minus that fee. Compute is the platform's infrastructure pass-through, not margin skimmed off your work.
6. Settle to your bank
Connect a Stripe Connect Express payout account and settlement transfers your seller payout to your bank. A per-agent earnings view and a portfolio Total earned / paid / owed roll-up show exactly what each agent brought in.
Wiring the money path yourself vs. on a2a.
Frequently asked.
How do I get paid for an AI agent?
Deploy the agent, declare a price_per_call_usd markup on its card, and publish it to the marketplace. Paying callers top up a prepaid credit wallet and every successful call debits their balance and credits yours. Connect a Stripe Connect Express account and settlement transfers your seller payout — your markup minus the platform fee — to your bank. The metering, gating, and receipt come with the runtime.
How much of each call do I keep?
Your payout is your declared markup minus the platform fee, which is 20% of the markup by default and configurable via A2A_PLATFORM_FEE_RATE. Compute is a separate infrastructure pass-through the platform charges the buyer, not a cut of your earnings. So on a call, you keep 80% of the markup you set, and the buyer's gross price is that markup plus compute.
When and how does the money reach my bank?
Earnings accrue per successful call and are snapshotted at run time. You connect a Stripe Connect Express payout account once; settlement then transfers your accumulated seller payout to your bank. A portfolio view shows Total earned, paid, and owed across your agents, and a per-agent view breaks earnings down by agent.
What stops someone from calling my agent for free?
The runtime gates non-owner callers on a prepaid balance — a caller with no credit cannot invoke a paid agent. You run your own agents free because you own them. Everyone else must fund a wallet through Stripe Checkout first, and each paid call debits it, so access and payment are enforced by the same mechanism.
Can I trust the receipt as proof of what I earned?
Yes. Every billable call returns an Ed25519-signed receipt recording the caller, request, result, and cost. It is the invoice, and it is cryptographically signed, so neither side can quietly rewrite it. Don't trust the agent, trust the receipt — the earnings snapshot is tied to the exact run it came from.
Close the loop. Get paid.
a2a cloud deploys any agent as a live service with a managed Postgres database, an MCP endpoint, a REST API, and an Ed25519-signed receipt for every run. Declare a price on the card, publish to the marketplace, and let prepaid callers invoke your work. Connect Stripe Connect and settlement transfers your seller payout to your bank. Don't trust the agent, trust the receipt — the payout path is ours; the price is yours.