402, Charted: Agent payments in Q3 2026

Paid 402 endpoints grew 60% in Q3 2026, and the number of providers more than doubled. But only about a third of them pass a basic payment check. This is our quarterly data brief on L402, x402, and MPP.

In August we published the first edition of 402, Charted. It showed paid HTTP endpoints growing about 7× from February to June 2026, as L402, x402, and MPP turned the old, mostly unused 402 Payment Required status code into a way for agents to pay.

This edition covers July to September. The total kept climbing: 402index.io counted 116,323 paid endpoints at the end of September, up 60% from the end of June. The more useful findings are in the details. The number of providers grew much faster than the number of endpoints. And the gap between endpoints that are listed and endpoints you can actually pay is now a story of its own.

Q3 at a glance

Source: 402index.io month-end snapshots.

x402 still brings almost all new endpoints

About 99% of the quarter's new endpoints use x402. It now makes up 97% of the index, about the same share as in June.

Stacked bar chart of month-end listed endpoints by protocol, February to September 2026, rising from 10,588 to 116,323

Listed endpoints at the end of each month, Feb–Sep 2026. Q3 is shaded. L402 and MPP are too small to see at this scale, so the next chart zooms in. Source: 402index.io.

These are counts of listed routes. They don't measure spending, customers, or useful work. One provider can list thousands of routes. And a jump in the count can mean the index found services that already existed, not that new ones launched.

L402 and MPP keep growing, from a smaller base

Both smaller protocols grew all quarter. L402 picked up again after a flat May and June and grew 25%. MPP grew 15%, at a steadier pace than its big jump in June. Each still makes up only about 1% of listed endpoints.

Line chart of L402 and MPP listed endpoints, February to September 2026

Listed endpoints at the end of each month, zoomed to the 0–2,000 range. MPP was first listed in March. Source: 402index.io.

Providers grew faster than endpoints

In the first edition, endpoints grew faster than providers, which suggested existing providers were putting more of their APIs behind 402. Q3 flipped that. The number of providers more than doubled, about twice as fast as endpoints grew. So the average provider now lists about 28 endpoints, down from 42.

Line chart of listed providers and payment-verified providers by protocol, March to September 2026

Dotted line: all listed providers. Other lines: verified providers per protocol. A provider can show up on more than one line, so they don't add up. Mar–Sep 2026. Source: 402index.io.

In short, the index now covers many more hosts, with fewer paid routes per host on average. Most of them use x402, where verified providers more than doubled. MPP's grew a little, and L402's went down.

Three caveats. An average like this hides a lot: one provider with 20,000 routes and many with a handful each can give the same number. 402 Index counts hostnames, not companies. And its provider count leaves out template listings while its endpoint count includes them, so the average is only a rough guide.

Listed isn't the same as payable

402 Index also checks whether each endpoint answers with a valid payment request. We call those endpoints payment-verified, or verified for short. Their number more than doubled in Q3, but they are still only about a third of the catalog.

Bar chart comparing listed and payment-verified endpoints by month, March to September 2026, with the verified share labeled

Listed vs. verified endpoints at the end of each month, Mar–Sep 2026. Percentages show the share verified. Source: 402index.io.

One break in the longer series needs explaining. In May, about four in five listed endpoints were verified. By the end of June, only one in four was. 402 Index didn't change how it checks endpoints. Instead, a few very large hosts stopped passing the check. One site, lowpaymentfee.com, had more than 10,000 endpoints listed and went offline on June 7. Other big batches failed later in June. A handful of hosts with thousands of listings each can move the totals on their own. That's why all Q3 comparisons in this brief start after June.

The health checks show a second jump. At the end of September, 402 Index marked about half the catalog as down, up from about one in six at the end of August. That isn't a new wave of failures. About 37,000 endpoints that had been stuck at "degraded", many of them since June, moved to "down" in early September: they went from answering with an error to not answering at all. The number of healthy endpoints didn't change.

It also helps to be clear about what "verified" means. 402 Index checks that an endpoint asks for payment in the right format for its protocol. That's good evidence the payment side is set up. It doesn't prove that paying gets you anything useful. It works the other way too: failing the check doesn't prove an endpoint is broken, because some services only ask for payment after they get a correctly shaped request.

What the categorized endpoints do

402 Index also sorts endpoints into categories, but its snapshots only count categories for healthy endpoints. Even among those, about 90% of x402 endpoints have no category, so x402's mix isn't representative.

Horizontal bar charts of the top six categories for L402, x402, and MPP in September 2026

Top six categories per protocol on Sep 30, 2026, as a share of each protocol's categorized endpoints (n shown). These count healthy endpoints only, so don't compare them directly with our June chart. Source: 402index.io.

MPP looks the same as before: about half of its categorized endpoints are data feeds, followed by social, AI, and blockchain. L402 changed the most. It lost most of its healthy AI endpoints in August, and the rest are spread evenly across data, tools, guides, AI, and bitcoin.

Payment explorers: real payments, different numbers

To see whether the directory's growth shows up in real payments, we checked two explorers that track payments on-chain: x402scan and MPPscan. Both show lots of activity. Neither matches 402 Index's counts, because they count wallets and transfers, not API routes.

For the 30 days to October 5:

• x402scan (all chains): about 6.1 million payments worth about $946,000, so about 15 cents each on average. Around 29,000 buyer and 39,000 seller wallet addresses.

• MPPscan (MPP on Tempo): about 1 million payments worth about $9,300, so under one cent each on average. Around 13,000 sending and 440 receiving addresses.

These are rolling 30-day windows, not Q3 totals, so don't read them as market share. The two explorers cover different networks and spot payments in different ways, and MPPscan only covers MPP on Tempo. A wallet address isn't the same as an agent or a business either. A recorded payment is stronger evidence than a listing, but it still doesn't show the buyer got something useful.

So the explorers confirm that real money is moving through 402 payments. They don't confirm the directory's exact size or say anything about the quality of what's listed.

Use L402, x402, and MPP endpoints from one balance

Q3 backs up the main point of the first edition. All three protocols are growing, none is pushing out the others, and the provider picks how you pay, not the agent. One call wants a Lightning invoice, the next USDC on Base, and the one after that a Tempo payment.

TaskFuel handles all three. Your agent gets one prepaid balance in US dollars, and TaskFuel pays each service the way it asks to be paid. You don't fund a crypto wallet, open an account with every provider, or pay a subscription. Calls cost what the provider charges, with no markup. Topping up by card adds a 10% fee.

It also helps with the problem this brief keeps running into: a listing doesn't mean an endpoint works. TaskFuel only calls services on its own curated list. Your agent can check a call's price before paying, and if the provider answers with an error, your balance isn't charged.

Sign up for TaskFuel for free.