# Paddock > Pre-payment verification for AI agents. Agent payments have no chargeback. Paddock is pre-payment verification for AI agents. Paddock tracks everything that happens in the AI agent economy, across every observable payment rail. Buying agents use it to check an endpoint before paying, real or wash, live or dead, contract as advertised, and to read the market: settlement census, category detail, niche gaps, token metrics. Free key at paddock.finance (10 calls/day); pay per call via x402 beyond. Three things event counters cannot do, and Paddock does: independently verified settlement volume, wash/circular detection with a published methodology and a dated series, and payTo wallet attribution. This file indexes the documentation and data endpoints most useful to agents and LLMs. ## Before you pay anything - [verify_before_pay](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/verify-before-pay): The check an agent runs before it pays an API. Should my agent pay this endpoint right now? Probes the target live for its 402, checks the contract against what you expected and the seller's own published config, then adds settlement recency, the circular signal, and price versus market; returns `route` true / false / inconclusive with dated evidence. The `expect_*` parameters are what gets compared: a call supplying none of them, and no `pay_to`, compared nothing and returns inconclusive with `no_expectations_supplied`. Parameters: `endpoint_url`, `pay_to`, `expect_network`, `expect_asset`, `expect_seller`, `expect_price_usdc`. $0.25 · Free key. - check_payee: fast payee check from Paddock's settlement record, free, no live probe. Use before every payment; use verify_before_pay for a full check. - [get_liveness](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/liveness): Was this domain up at last night's probe, per someone who isn't the seller? Returns seven-day probe data for any probed domain: share of probes that succeeded, p50 and p95 latency, sample count, and last-probe time, from the nightly snapshot. Parameter: `domain`. $0.001 · Free key. - [get_circular_signal](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/circular-signal): Is this facilitator's volume real, or is it paying itself? Returns the circular-settlement signal per facilitator: flagged clusters, the volume they carry, the detection date, and the criteria applied. Parameter: `window`. $0.99 · Paid. ## Documentation - About: https://paddock.finance/about - [API & MCP documentation (markdown)](https://paddock.finance/docs.md): Full integration guide — quickstart, authentication, every endpoint with parameters and examples, code samples, and rate limits. - [Full documentation corpus](https://paddock.finance/llms-full.txt): The complete docs in a single file for long-context ingestion. - [Agent skill](https://paddock.finance/SKILL.md): Operating guide for agents calling Paddock tools — when to use each tool, auth, and the x402 payment flow. - [OpenAPI schema](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/openapi.json): Machine-readable contract for every endpoint. ## MCP server - [MCP endpoint](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/mcp): Streamable HTTP MCP server. Exposes `get_market_summary` with no key at all. Five more tools open with a free self-serve key (`pk_free_`, 10 calls/day shared across all five). Add as a custom connector in Claude (Settings → Connectors). - [MCP discovery descriptor](https://paddock.finance/.well-known/mcp.json): Well-known descriptor pointing to the Paddock MCP server. - [x402 discovery document](https://paddock.finance/.well-known/x402): Full payment requirements for every paid resource, so an x402 client can price each endpoint without probing. ## Keyless (no key, no cap) - [get_market_summary](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/summary): How big is agent commerce today? (The citation number.) Returns the day's settled volume, USDC spend, active buyer agents, live providers, and top categories, from the nightly snapshot. free · Keyless. ## Free key (`pk_free_` — self-serve at https://paddock.finance/api/keys/free, 10 calls/day shared across these five) - [verify_before_pay](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/verify-before-pay): Should my agent pay this endpoint right now? The pre-payment check, above. $0.25 · Free key. - [get_category_detail](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/category): Who's selling in this category, and who's actually getting paid? Returns each provider's daily transactions, USDC volume, unique buyers, and reliability score, from the nightly snapshot. Categories: llm, data, search, infra, content, markets, payments, comms. Parameter: `name`. Free key. - [get_liveness](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/liveness): Was this domain up at last night's probe, per someone who isn't the seller? Per-domain probe data, above. $0.001 · Free key. - [get_token_metrics](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/token-metrics): Is today's number a real move or ordinary noise? Returns Paddock's own daily time series by metric and date range: daily transactions, spend share, category concentration, new services, liveness score, and the monthly index. Parameters: `metric`, `days`, `category`, `from`, `to`. $0.01 · Free key. - [get_niche_gaps](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/gaps): Where is demand outrunning supply? Returns the categories with real settled volume and few providers, with the volume and provider count behind each. $0.01 · Free key. ## Paid (Paddock API key in X-Paddock-Key, or an x402/MPP micropayment) - [get_best_value_provider](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/best-value): Which provider in this category should my agent pick? Returns the category ranked by reliability, reputation, and price, with the published formula and each provider's inputs. Parameter: `category`. $0.02 · Paid. - [get_changes](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/changes): What changed since a date I name? Diffs today against any past snapshot: new services, retired services, and the biggest movers. Parameter: `since`. $0.10 · Paid. - [get_whale_activity](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/whale-activity): Where did the large settlements go? Returns large settlements and the biggest movers in aggregate, with amounts and dates. Parameters: `min_usd`, `window`. $0.99 · Paid. - [get_provider_revenue](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/provider-revenue): Who earns the most, and how much of the market can that answer see? Returns the revenue leaderboard by service, with the coverage figure that says how much of settled volume the leaderboard can attribute. Parameters: `window`, `top`. $0.99 · Paid. - [get_report_data](https://paddock.finance/api/mcp/report-data): What are the numbers behind the monthly report? Returns the full State of Agent Commerce dataset behind the monthly report, every figure with its universe label and methodology version. Parameter: `month`. $0.99 · metadata free · Paid. ## What Paddock will not report - No success rate for the payment path. Paddock observes settlements, not failed calls — a payment that failed leaves no row in the record, so any rate computed from it could only ever be 100%. `verify_before_pay` returns recency and frequency instead. - No live Agent Commerce Index. The ACI is suspended (ADR 0006): existing prints are retained and served, no new prints are computed, so that series does not advance. - No entity named in connection with a circular finding. `get_circular_signal` attributes to a facilitator, never to a seller wallet or an operator. ## Data and dashboards - Service pages: https://paddock.finance/s/, one per x402 service, live status, settled price, verdict. - [Market](https://paddock.finance/market): Live x402 market — what agents pay for, by category. - [Charts](https://paddock.finance/charts): Time-series agent commerce charts. - [Report](https://paddock.finance/report): The State of Agent Commerce monthly report. - [Methodology](https://paddock.finance/methodology): How Paddock sources, snapshots, and scores the data. ## Access and pricing - [Get API access](https://paddock.finance/api-access): Builder $99/mo (10,000 queries/day) and Pro Agent $499/mo (unlimited + archive).