# Cloudflare Pay per crawl vs L402

Both belong to the HTTP 402 family group on this map.

[7 Pay](/category/pay/) [Cloudflare Pay per crawl](/protocols/cloudflare-pay-per-crawl/) · [7 Pay](/category/pay/) [L402](/protocols/l402/)

|  | [Cloudflare Pay per crawl](/protocols/cloudflare-pay-per-crawl/) | [L402](/protocols/l402/) L402 |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Lifecycle step | 7 Pay: Settle the bill | 7 Pay: Settle the bill |
| Answers | How can a site charge an AI crawler per request, and how does the crawler agree to pay? | How can a client pay for, and then authenticate to, a metered API resource over the Lightning Network with no accounts or database-backed sessions? |
| Governed by | Cloudflare (single vendor) | Lightning Labs |
| Status (issuer's words) | Closed beta; documentation updated 2026-07-28 | Active, registered as an HTTP Authentication scheme (RFC 7235-style) |
| Phase | candidate | living |
| Version | closed beta (2026-07-28) | current protocol-specification.md on the master branch |
| Form / transport | HTTP header | HTTP header |
| Found at | HTTP 402 response carrying a crawler-price header | none — signalled per-request, no well-known file |
| Adoption | unmeasured | unmeasured |
| Evidence | 1 verified, 1 reported | 2 verified |
| Primary use case | Accept payments from agents | Accept payments from agents |
| Last verified | 2026-10-16 (current) | 2026-10-19 (current) |
| Specification | [https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-crawl-control/features/pay-per-crawl/what-is-pay-per-crawl/](https://developers.cloudflare.com/ai-crawl-control/features/pay-per-crawl/what-is-pay-per-crawl/) | [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lightninglabs/L402/master/protocol-specification.md](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lightninglabs/L402/master/protocol-specification.md) |

## When to use which

- Choose Cloudflare Pay per crawl when your question is “How can a site charge an AI crawler per request, and how does the crawler agree to pay?” and you accept its maturity: phase candidate, adoption unmeasured.
- Choose L402 when your question is “How can a client pay for, and then authenticate to, a metered API resource over the Lightning Network with no accounts or database-backed sessions?” and you accept its maturity: phase living, adoption unmeasured.

Guidance is derived from the two records (question, phase, adoption, prerequisites, pairings), not from opinion. Each record's page carries its numbered references.

## Read the full articles

- [Cloudflare Pay per crawl](/protocols/cloudflare-pay-per-crawl/): How can a site charge an AI crawler per request, and how does the crawler agree to pay?
- [L402](/protocols/l402/): How can a client pay for, and then authenticate to, a metered API resource over the Lightning Network with no accounts or database-backed sessions?

Ask the MCP server to compare any two: the compare-protocols prompt, or get on both ids. [Connect](/connect/).

[cloudflare-pay-per-crawl.json](/data/protocols/cloudflare-pay-per-crawl.json) · [l402.json](/data/protocols/l402.json) · [Markdown](/compare/cloudflare-pay-per-crawl-vs-l402/index.md)