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Apify, Coinbase Tie-Up Brings 20,000+ Automation Tools to x402

June 30, 2026 at 11:14 EDT

AI Agents
Sales & Business
Infra & Chips

On June 30, 2026, Apify announced a partnership with Coinbase to add more than 20,000 web automation Actors from the Apify Store to the x402 ecosystem. The move lets AI agents autonomously discover, pay for, and run these tools via on-chain payments in USDC (on the Base chain), without creating an API key or an Apify account, as Apify outlines in its explainer.

June 30, 2026 · Apify × Coinbase

20,000+ Web Tools Go Pay-Per-Use for AI Agents

Apify's automation "Actors" now speak the x402 payment protocol — letting an AI agent discover, pay in USDC, and run a tool mid-task with no account, no API key, and no human in the loop.

The 10× jump

Agent-accessible tools via x402

Before

~2,000

After

20,000+

More than a tenfold expansion of tools an agent can buy and run on its own.

USDC minimum transaction (prepaid balance)

100s

Records retrievable for $1, by early estimates

60min

Idle balance auto-refunded, less Base gas fees

How a paid tool call works

Call Actor

Agent requests a tool in the Apify Store

→

402 + Pay

"Payment Required" → settle in USDC by signature

→

Run + Result

Tool executes, output returns to the agent

Via an MCP server or direct REST API · USDC on Base mainnet · subsequent calls draw down the prepaid balance.

Why developers like it

10× more tools agents can buy and run mid-task
"No account, no API key, no human in the loop"
Lowers the barrier to autonomous agents

The caveats

Explicitly "experimental"
No Standby mode; full-permission Actors excluded
Pay-per-event pricing required; few reviews yet

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