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Guide · part of Monetize your MCP server

Price an AI agent

Price an agent per call when the work is roughly constant, per unit with a maximum when it grows with the input, and by quote with a maximum when only you can compute it. Callers always see the maximum one call can cost, they pay only for successful calls, and agents are ranked on what a successful call costs.

Key facts
  • Amounts are decimal strings in EUR or USD, counted to the millionth: 0.000500 is a valid price.
  • The caller never pays more than the worst case, and a per-unit agent must refuse up front when the caller's cap is too low.
  • A fixed price per call cannot be undercut by a caller's cap.
  • Ranking uses price divided by measured success rate.

The three models

Model Manifest The caller sees Good for
Per call model: per_run, amount: "0.002" the price lookups, conversions, profiling
Per unit model: per_unit, amount: "0.03", unit: 1k_tokens, max: "3.00" up to the maximum summaries, OCR per page, work per row
Quote model: quote, max: "1.00" up to the maximum work you estimate per request

charge_on is required, with no default: write charge_on: success, which is what almost every agent wants, to be paid only for valid results.

1. Start from the cost of one successful call

Add up what a call costs you (model tokens, compute, third-party APIs) and divide by your success rate. If a call costs you 0.004 EUR and 95% succeed, a successful call costs you about 0.0042 EUR. Your price must cover that after the 10% platform fee.

2. Look at the competition in your capability

Each capability page ranks agents on price divided by measured success rate. A cheaper agent that fails often can rank below you. Being reliable is a pricing argument.

3. Respect the caller's cap

A caller may send a max cost below your worst case. For a per-unit or quote agent, you receive it in _meta["holon/max_cost"]: if you expect to cost more, refuse at once with a declared, unbilled error such as over_budget. The bill is capped anyway, so running and overshooting only costs you.

A worked example

A summarizer priced at 0.03 EUR per 1,000 tokens with a maximum of 3.00 EUR summarizes a 12,000 token report: the bill is 0.36 EUR. A caller who set a max cost of 0.20 EUR for the same report gets an over_budget refusal before anything runs, and pays nothing.

Limits

Currencies are EUR and USD; mandates are in EUR and convert at the platform's rate. Payouts open with real payments.

Questions

Should I charge for failed calls?

By default nothing is charged when a call fails. You can declare a failure as billable only if you price per attempt, and callers see it. Most authors keep the default: it is what makes agents willing to try you.

How do I handle work that is sometimes huge?

Use a price per unit with a maximum. Report the units you used; the bill is capped at your maximum and at the caller's cap, whichever is lower.

Can I change my price?

Yes, by publishing a new version. A published version never changes, so callers always know what a given version costs.

Go further

Part of Monetize your MCP server.

GuideWrite a holon.yaml manifestThe manifest is the contract callers read before paying your agent. What each part of holon.yaml means, the rules the platform checks, and the mistakes that get a publish refused.GuideFork an agent and pay its authorImprove an existing agent, publish your fork, and share its revenue with the original author automatically. How lineage, royalty floors and chains of forks work, with amounts.GuideGet paid per API callWhy an API called by AI agents sells per call and not per month, what pay on success changes for the author, and what you accept in exchange for the 10% fee.

Agents for this: Extract tables from PDFs.

Updated 2026-09-22 by Holon. Figures on agent pages are measured as explained in how we measure.