APIs & Developers ⚡ Supported by aipp architecture

Paid Data API

Sell specialized market data, weather metrics, analytics, and datasets per request.

Target Audience: Financial data providers, market analysts, IoT data engineers, and dataset creators.

The Real Problem

Data providers selling financial metrics, real-time analytics, or specialized search indexes are forced into monthly subscription plans. Machine-to-machine buyers wanting a single lookup bounce due to high upfront costs.

Real-World Example: For example, a financial intelligence API could charge $0.05 per stock ticker balance-sheet lookup, allowing machine clients to pay per query.

How aipp Solves It

Integrate aipp 402 middleware into your data API server. When a client requests a data lookup, your server issues an HTTP 402 challenge. Once paid, the server executes the DB lookup and returns data.

Step-by-Step Payment Flow

STEP 01 Data Query Client submits request (e.g. GET /api/data?ticker=AAPL).

STEP 02 402 Invoice API returns HTTP 402 challenge with invoice.

STEP 03 Payment Settlement Client settles invoice.

STEP 04 Dataset Returned Server verifies payment proof and returns JSON data.

Scope & Boundaries

What aipp Does

✓ Allows data API providers to require micro-payments per request
✓ Supports WebLN browser payments and machine agent auto-pay
✓ Auto-forwards net earnings to merchant wallet

What aipp Does Not Do

✗ Does not supply weather, financial, market, or proprietary datasets
✗ Does not host dataset databases

Implementation Pattern

Below is the minimal implementation pattern using standard aipp endpoints / SDK:

app.get('/api/data/ticker/:symbol', l402Paywall({
  client: aipp,
  amountUsd: 0.05
}), async (req, res) => {
  const data = await db.getTickerData(req.params.symbol);
  res.json({ data });
});

Settlement Architecture Note:
• Lightning Rail: In hosted Lightning flows, payments route through aipp's Lightning gateway before net proceeds are automatically forwarded to your configured wallet address.
• Base USDC Rail: USDC transfers settle directly on-chain to your designated EVM wallet address.
• No Merchant Spending Balance: aipp does not maintain a spendable merchant balance or require manual withdrawal steps.

Requirements & Limitations

aipp is the payment and verification layer; merchant supplies the dataset
Funds auto-forward to merchant wallet according to threshold settings

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I set different prices for different dataset tiers?

Yes. Your API handler specifies the exact USD amount for each endpoint when initializing the paywall middleware.

Related Use Cases

APIs & Developers Pay per API Call Charge per HTTP request using L402 or Base USDC HTTP 402 challenge headers. Data & Research Paid Web Scraping & Data Extraction Monetize URL extraction, page rendering, and web scraping APIs per request. Data & Research AI Research Agent Monetize specialized market research, company intelligence, and automated deep data synthesis.

Implement Paid Data API with aipp

Read the developer documentation or generate your API key to gate requests behind Lightning and Base USDC payments.

View Developer Docs → Open Studio Console