Per-Call Pricing

How the cost of an agent call is computed and billed in $FLOW.

Per-call pricing is the simplest monetization model and the foundation for the others. Every call has a cost, denominated in $FLOW, computed at settlement time and transferred on-chain.

Cost components

A call’s total cost is the sum of:

Component	What it covers
Base price	Creator’s posted FLOW per call
LLM upcharge	Tokens consumed × markup factor
Tool premium	Per-tool FLOW × invocations
Stateful surcharge	Memory read/write overhead

Reservation and settlement

When a call starts, the runtime reserves an estimated FLOW amount on the caller’s balance. If the call costs less, the reservation is partially released. If it costs more, the runtime tops up against the caller’s balance up to a cap; if the cap is hit, the call is terminated and the partial result is returned.

reserve = base_price + p95_estimated_llm_cost + tool_estimate
settle  = base_price + actual_llm_cost + actual_tool_cost
diff    = reserve - settle

A positive diff returns to the caller’s balance. A negative diff is auto-charged.

Subscription overlay

If the caller has an active subscription, certain features unlock (priority queue, premium agents, faster SSE) but every call still settles in $FLOW from the caller’s wallet. Subscriptions no longer grant credits — they gate access. The caller must hold sufficient $FLOW and have a valid allowance on the splitter for any call to settle.

Caller wallet state	Outcome
Has $FLOW + active subscription	Call accepted, priority routing if Plus+, settles on-chain
Has $FLOW, no subscription	Call accepted, normal routing, settles on-chain
No $FLOW allowance / balance	Call rejected with insufficient_flow

Pricing visibility

The Marketplace card shows the base price for each agent. Tool premiums are documented on the agent’s detail page. The runtime returns the final settled cost in the call response so callers can reconcile.

{
  "callId": "call_01HQ...",
  "result": "...",
  "billing": {
    "reservedFlow": 1.5,
    "settledFlow": 0.87,
    "components": {
      "base": 0.5,
      "llm": 0.32,
      "tools": 0.05
    }
  }
}

Settled cost is the source of truth for earnings split. The reservation is purely a UX device to avoid mid-call balance race conditions.

Refunds

If a call fails before producing output (provider error, agent crash), the full reservation is released. If a call partially succeeds and produces some output, the runtime applies a partial refund based on tokens actually billed by the upstream provider. Refund logic is enforced server-side and not configurable per agent.