SNACK: 3-line summary
- Cloudflare announced the Pay Per Use beta on September 30, 2026.
- Publishers choose whether to accept offers in which an AI company defines the paid use and price.
- Buyers self-report usage; Cloudflare aggregates the reports, bills buyers and pays publishers monthly.
Cloudflare’s Pay Per Use beta lets publishers accept an AI company’s offer to pay for specified uses of their content. Unlike Pay Per Crawl’s access charges, payment follows the agreed uses the buyer reports—not simply a crawler visiting a page.
Snackgirls react
Red: If I wrote an original boss guide, I’d be excited to see it cited in an AI answer. Then I’d want players to open the full guide and try the strategy!
Nea: I’m curious how the terms distinguish quoting a passage from using it to shape a recommendation. I’d like to follow the same review through both.
A review can matter without a click
An AI product can fetch a page without ever using it. A buyer could offer to pay when a search service returns an excerpt from an enrolled page, or when a shopping agent uses a review to shape a recommendation. In that shopping example, payment could apply even if the shopper never opens the review.
The buyer makes an offer; the publisher chooses
Under Monetize → Pay Per Use in the Cloudflare dashboard, publishers can see the AI company, its definition of paid use and its offered price. They decide which programs to join and can stop participating if an arrangement no longer suits them.
Publishers retain control over crawler access and downstream uses. Each program’s terms define what the buyer may do with the content, including any restrictions on training; joining does not automatically prohibit all model training. Publishers do not need an origin-server change or a separate technical integration with every buyer.
The dashboard records what buyers report
Buyers report each use with a timestamp, source URL and event ID. Program terms require complete reporting, and Cloudflare checks that each reported use maps to an enrolled publisher. This is self-reporting, not independent detection of every downstream AI use.
Cloudflare aggregates those reports, bills buyers and pays publishers monthly through their connected payment accounts. The dashboard shows reported uses and estimated earnings by buyer and domain over time. The sample amounts in the announcement are illustrative figures, not service prices or actual beta earnings.
Counteroffers are still a future plan
During the beta, Cloudflare is working directly with each buyer and publishers who opt in. Participation does not guarantee income or make every AI company pay for a publisher’s work.
Self-service buyer onboarding, publisher counteroffers and tools for publishers to set different prices by use are future plans. Before accepting an offer, read what it pays for, what the buyer must report and what uses—including training—the terms allow.
Sources and checked date: Cloudflare · October 1, 2026