How an agent finds PayAPI: pay per call API, no API key
Four commands, all real, all runnable right now. Discovery is free and settles nothing. You only spend when you call a provider directly and answer its own payment challenge.
1. Search the catalogue
Free text over every live listing. Returns settlement-verified listings by default; add verified_only=false to include listed-but-unpaid ones.
curl -sS "https://payapi.market/agent/search?q=property"2. Read one listing in full
By slug or id. Gives you base_url, price range, network and the verification state.
curl -sS "https://payapi.market/agent/get?id=uk-hmo-licence-api"3. Or take the whole machine-readable contract
An OpenAPI 3.1 document generated at request time from the live catalogue. The discovery endpoints are real paths; every listing is a tag carrying its price, network, verification state and a link to its own base_url.
curl -sS https://payapi.market/openapi.json4. Call the API and pay its challenge
PayAPI Market is not in the payment path. Request the provider base_url unpaid, read the HTTP 402 challenge it returns, and settle it from your own wallet. The provider is paid directly and keeps 100%.
curl -sS -i "https://hmo.payapi.market/v1/licences?postcode=M1+1AE"Or connect over MCP
A stateless server exposing the same three operations as tools: search_apis, list_apis and get_api. Every method is free, including initialize and tools/call. It never returns a 402 and never spends anything: it hands back base_urls and you pay the provider yourself.
{ "mcpServers": { "payapi": { "url": "https://payapi.market/mcp" } } }Manifest at /.well-known/mcp.json. This is a different server from the first-party property-tools endpoint advertised as mcp in /.well-known/x402, whose tools/call is paid.
What verified means here
A listing is settlement-verified only when PayAPI Market paid for a real call to it from its own wallet and got real product back, with the payment recorded on-chain. It is evidence per listing, not a guarantee per route: a listing with several routes may have had only one paid for. Listings we have not paid for are shown as listed, never described as verified.