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Lightning L402 gateway for your API and a public API Hub for discovery. Built for data sellers and AI builders. Non-custodial, pay per call.

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14-day free trial, no platform fees, no credit card

Pay only for what you use.
Non-custodial by design.

A small base fee plus usage-based pricing that scales with your traffic. Client payments go directly to your wallet. We only charge for the platform.

All prices are in sats (satoshis), the base unit of Bitcoin. 1 Bitcoin = 100,000,000 sats. USD estimates reflect the current BTC exchange rate.

Publishing an API? The numbers below are your platform bill. If you are consuming APIs, each provider sets their own per-call price. Browse the API Hub.

Your revenue

What you charge your clients

You set the price. Per-request, per-KB, token bucket, time pass, or metered. Clients pay your price in sats via Lightning.

Payments settle directly to your wallet
You keep 100% of client payments
Set any price model you want
Platform fee

What you pay bolthub

A small weekly fee for running your gateway infrastructure: base fee plus usage-based pricing that scales with traffic.

1,000 sats/week base
400 free requests/month included
Billed weekly via Lightning invoice

One plan. No tiers to compare.

Base fee + usage. That's it.

4,000sats/month

Billed weekly (1,000 sats/week). Includes 400 free requests per month.

Unlimited projects and endpoints
Non-custodial. Your keys, your funds
Optional auto-pay from your connected wallet
No identity verification required
No credit card required. Pay weekly via Lightning
Start your free trial

Usage rates

First 400 requests
requests/month
Free
401 – 50,000
requests/month
2 sats/req
50,001 – 500,000
requests/month
1 sat/req
500,001+
requests/month
0.5 sats/req

Usage is tracked weekly, invoiced at the end of each 7-day cycle. Rates decrease as volume increases.

Cost estimator

Monthly requestsBase feeUsage feeTotal/month
4004,00004,000 sats
5,0004,0009,20013,200 sats
25,0004,00049,20053,200 sats
100,0004,000149,200153,200 sats
500,0004,000549,200553,200 sats

USD estimates based on current BTC price. We periodically adjust sat amounts to keep costs predictable in real terms.

Five ways to price your API

You set the price for your endpoints. Choose the model that fits your use case.

Per Request

Simple lookups, stateless APIs

Fixed price per API call. Each request triggers a Lightning invoice. Client pays, gets the response.

Example

A weather API charges 10 sats per query. Client pays 10 sats, gets the forecast.

Request402 + invoicepayretryresponse

Token Bucket

AI agents making multiple calls, batch consumers

Buy a batch of requests upfront. Client pays once for N requests, then uses them without further payment interruption.

Example

An inference API sells 50 calls for 500 sats. The AI agent pays once and makes 50 requests.

Request402 + invoicepayuse N requestsdepletednew 402

Time Pass

Streaming data, real-time feeds, dashboards

Unlimited access for a time window. Client pays once, gets unlimited requests for the configured duration.

Example

A market data feed charges 1,000 sats for 60 minutes of unlimited access.

Request402 + invoicepayunlimited access until expiry

Metered

Inference APIs, compute, variable workloads

Prepaid balance, deducted per use. Client prepays a balance. Each request deducts a fixed cost. When depleted, they pay again.

Example

A GPU inference API: prepay 1,000 sats, each call costs 5 sats. That’s 200 calls.

Request402 + invoicepaysession (balance decremented)depletednew 402

Per KB

Data downloads, large payloads, file APIs

Price scales with response size. Price is calculated based on the response payload size in kilobytes.

Example

A satellite imagery API charges 2 sats per KB. A 500 KB image costs 1,000 sats.

Request402 + invoice (based on estimated size)paydata

How billing works

Client payments settle directly to your Lightning wallet.bolthub charges a separate weekly platform fee for gateway infrastructure.

Client payments

Settle directly to your wallet

Platform fee

Usage-based, billed weekly

Fair pricing

Adjusted with BTC price moves

Enterprise

Need higher limits, dedicated infrastructure, or custom integration? We offer enterprise plans with SLA guarantees.

Contact us

Ready to get started?

14-day free trial. No platform fees during the trial.

Start your free trial