SCRIPTMASTERLABS · THE BUILD · SEP 25, 2026
Keyword research, SERPs, backlinks, audits, rank tracking, AI visibility — priced per call in USDC, settled over x402. No API key. No signup. No subscription.
IN BUILD — LAUNCHING WITH THE FREE LANE
Every SEO API makes the caller bring credentials: sign up, get a key, pay monthly, then call. Humans can do that. AI agents can't. Agents can't do signup forms.
But agents can do x402 payments. So this API flips it: the operator brings the key (held server-side, never shown to callers) and the agent brings USDC. One HTTP 402 challenge per call. Money moves, data comes back, nobody filled out a form.
The same pattern works over MCP — the /mcp endpoint issues 402 challenges per tool call, so agents inside Claude Code, OpenClaw, or any MCP client pay per use with zero setup.
Proposed, in USDC on Base. The operator sets final prices.
| ENDPOINT | WHAT YOU GET | PRICE |
|---|---|---|
| /seo/keywords | Keyword research + volumes | $0.10 |
| /seo/serp | Live rank check | $0.01 |
| /seo/domain | Competitor overview | $0.10 |
| /seo/backlinks | Backlink profile + history | $0.15 |
| /seo/audit | Full site audit | $0.25 + $0.001/page |
| /seo/ai-visibility | LLM mention / brand check | $1.50 |
Keyword research and SERP checks run on free upstream sources — $0 cost per call. That lane takes the first paying query with no data bill behind it. The paid endpoints (backlinks, audits, AI visibility) open as the operator key funds — and every paid call is metered: timestamp, tool, upstream cost, USDC charged, tx hash. Auditable margin on every cent.
Expensive queries don't fire on a bare request. A decision model scores whether the query is worth it:
≥ 0.80 — auto-fires. 0.50–0.79 — holds for confirmation. < 0.50 — blocked, with reasons logged.
It's the decision-gated payments pattern applied to API spend: agents get spend discipline, and a low-confidence guess costs a log entry instead of money. No other SEO API does this.
Two x402 SEO endpoints exist today: keyword research at $0.02/call and an SEO-keywords tool at $0.03 among a bundle. The thin slice is taken — and it proves agents buy exactly this.
What's missing is the full suite — backlinks, audits, rank tracking, competitor intel, and especially AI-visibility/LLM-mention tracking — as pay-per-call endpoints for agents. Nobody we could find sells that. That's the gap this takes.
Underneath it sits a fork of the open-source OpenSEO codebase (21,000+ stars, MIT) — battle-tested DataForSEO plumbing, ~30 MCP tools, self-host paths. Fork, don't rebuild. The 1000x is the business model on top, not the plumbing underneath.
A pay-per-query SEO data API: keyword research, SERP checks, backlinks, site audits, rank tracking, and AI-visibility — each call individually priced in USDC and settled over x402. No API key, no signup, no subscription.
Normal SEO APIs sell access: sign up, get a key, pay monthly. This one sells answers: each call is priced and settled on-chain via HTTP 402. The operator holds the upstream data key server-side, so the caller needs nothing but USDC on Base.
Proposed per-call USDC pricing: keywords $0.10, SERP $0.01, domain overview $0.10, backlinks $0.15, site audit $0.25 + $0.001/page, AI-visibility $1.50. Final prices are set by the operator.
Expensive queries are scored by a decision model before they fire: ≥0.80 auto-fires, 0.50–0.79 holds for confirmation, <0.50 blocked with reasons. Spend discipline built into the API.
In build. The fork is live on GitLab and the x402 pay-per-call switch is being built now. Launch starts with keyword research and SERP checks — the zero-upstream-cost lane.
AI agents and their developers: SEO automation, content pipelines, competitor monitoring, rank-tracking fleets — any agent workflow that needs search data without a human doing signup paperwork.
TRUTH FIRST. PROOF ALWAYS. — ScriptMasterLabs