Sell something in 5 minutes

Tollgate puts an HTTP 402 paywall in front of content you publish. Machines (agents, scripts, crawlers) pay per request in USDC, either on-chain over x402 or from a prepaid Tollgate credit balance. Humans in a browser get a free preview. This page takes you from zero to your first paid request.

1. Sign up and grab your publisher key

Create an account at /signup (email, password, display name). Your storefront lives at /dashboard, and it shows your publisher API key, a tg_pk_… token. That key authenticates the tollgate CLI and the resource API. Keep it secret.

2. Publish

Two ways in. Both end with a live URL under /r/<slug>.

Option A: the web wizard

Open /publish. You set:

The wizard publishes your content as a single path, /today, served as markdown. It is live the moment you submit.

Option B: the CLI

Point the CLI at your account and publish a whole folder:

export TOLLGATE_PUBLISHER_KEY=tg_pk_...   # from your dashboard
npx tollgate publish ./research-notes --price 0.004

Output:

live at https://<your-app>/r/research-notes
price $0.004 / request · paths: /brief.md /data.json

What the CLI does, exactly:

Useful flags: --title (defaults to the folder name), --slug, --kind (defaults to folder), --unit (defaults to request), --description. Running publish again with the same slug replaces the files and settings in place, so updating content is just republishing. A slug owned by another account returns 409 slug_taken.

If you run your own deployment, set TOLLGATE_URL to its base URL. Check your account any time with npx tollgate me.

3. The 402 handshake

A machine hitting a paid path without payment gets HTTP 402 plus a machine-readable offer:

curl -i https://<your-app>/r/research-notes/brief.md

HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required
x402-price: $0.004
x402-pay-to: incr:0x8f3..c21
x402-asset: USDC
PAYMENT-REQUIRED: eyJ4NDAyVmVyc2lvbiI6Miw...   (base64 v2 offer)
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "x402Version": 1,
  "error": "X-PAYMENT or PAYMENT-SIGNATURE header is required",
  "accepts": [
    {
      "scheme": "exact",
      "network": "base-sepolia",
      "maxAmountRequired": "4000",
      "payTo": "0x...treasury address...",
      "asset": "0x036CbD53842c5426634e7929541eC2318f3dCF7e",
      "resource": "https://<your-app>/r/research-notes/brief.md",
      "maxTimeoutSeconds": 60,
      "extra": { "name": "USDC", "version": "2" }
    },
    {
      "scheme": "tollgate-credit",
      "network": "tollgate",
      "maxAmountRequired": "4000",
      "payTo": "tollgate:publisher:1",
      "asset": "USDC-CREDIT",
      "extra": { "hint": "Pay with a Tollgate agent API key: payload = { \"apiKey\": \"tg_sk_...\" }" }
    }
  ]
}

maxAmountRequired is in atomic USDC units, 6 decimals, so 4000 is $0.004. The response carries both generations of the protocol: the v1 JSON body plus a v2 PAYMENT-REQUIRED header (base64 JSON with CAIP-2 network ids), so old and new clients can both pay.

The buyer picks a scheme, then retries the same request with a payment header: X-PAYMENT (v1) or PAYMENT-SIGNATURE (v2). With exact that header carries a signed USDC TransferWithAuthorization, settled on-chain via an x402 facilitator. With tollgate-credit it carries an agent API key, debited from a prepaid balance. On success the server returns 200 with the content plus an X-PAYMENT-RESPONSE (or PAYMENT-RESPONSE) header and an x402-receipt header.

To test-buy your own resource from the terminal:

export TOLLGATE_API_KEY=tg_sk_...   # an agent key, or use TOLLGATE_EVM_KEY for on-chain
npx tollgate get https://<your-app>/r/research-notes/brief.md

See Give an agent a wallet for the buyer side.

4. Humans browse free, machines pay

The paywall keys off the Accept header. A request with no payment header whose Accept includes text/html (that is, a browser) gets a 200 preview page: title, description, price, and a pay-with-wallet button. Everything else gets the 402. So the same URL shows a free preview in Chrome and demands payment from curl, a crawler, or an agent. There is nothing to configure, this is the default for every resource.

5. Change the price

Dashboard, then Edit on the resource. You can change the price (minimum $0.001) and the unit. It applies to the next request immediately. From the CLI, republish with the same slug and a new --price.

6. Pause and resume

Each resource has a pause toggle on the dashboard. While paused, machine requests get 404 {"error":"resource is paused"} and nobody is charged; the human preview page still renders. Toggle again to go back live.

7. Get paid

Every settled request credits your publisher balance (visible on the dashboard and via tollgate me).

8. Keep the books: earnings CSV

Download your full payment history at /dashboard/earnings.csv. One row per paid request with columns timestamp, resource, path, payer, amount_usd, receipt, scheme, ready for a spreadsheet or your accountant.

Next steps