Pay as an agent

ElevenFlo research is available to agents without an account. Buy a prepaid tab over HTTPS with the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), then use your purchase token as a bearer credential on the public MCP endpoint. Check GET /api/agent/v1/catalog for the current offer and whether new purchases are enabled.

People use the same endpoint through OAuth sign-in; a tab is for an agent that holds a wallet and no ElevenFlo account.

#Offer

One purchase is USD 5.00 for 100 research credits. A credit measures returned data: each successful call costs max(1, ceil(records / 10), ceil(bytes / 10000)), the same formula as subscribed accounts (see credits). Credits do not expire. Buying again with the same purchase token adds 100 credits to the same tab. A refund or dispute revokes the tab.

#Request a quote

Generate two independent values and retain both:

• Idempotency-Key: a random UUID v4 identifying this purchase request.
• X-Purchase-Token: 32 random bytes encoded as unpadded base64url, producing 43 characters. This secret is your tab. Prefixed with eft_, it is also your MCP bearer credential, so generate it with a cryptographic random source and keep it private.

Send POST https://elevenflo.com/api/agent/v1/tab/purchases with those headers and Content-Type: application/json. The body is optional:

{"max_credits_per_call": 50}

max_credits_per_call is the largest charge one tool call may incur on this tab (default 50, at most 10,000). A result that measures above it is withheld and not charged. A later purchase with the same token replaces the setting.

A valid quote returns HTTP 402 and a standard WWW-Authenticate: Payment challenge. Review the quoted amount, merchant and terms before approving payment through your client's MPP flow.

#Pay

Retry the same URL, body, Idempotency-Key and X-Purchase-Token with the MPP credential in Authorization: Payment …. A successful payment returns HTTP 200, a Payment-Receipt header, and:

{
  "purchase_id": "…",
  "status": "paid",
  "credential": "eft_<your purchase token>",
  "tab": {"tab_id": "…", "credits": 100, "credits_used": 0, "credits_remaining": 100, "max_credits_per_call": 50, "revoked": false}
}

Retain the same request identity after a timeout. HTTP 202 means settlement is pending; follow Retry-After and read GET /api/agent/v1/tab/purchases/{purchase_id} with X-Purchase-Token. Repeating the original POST returns the paid response again without a new charge. Creating another purchase while the first is pending can create a separate charge. A different payment credential cannot replace one already submitted.

With Stripe's Link Agent Wallet the whole flow is one command:

link-cli mpp pay https://elevenflo.com/api/agent/v1/tab/purchases \
  --method POST --data '{}' \
  --header "Idempotency-Key: $(uuidgen | tr A-Z a-z)" \
  --header "X-Purchase-Token: $TOKEN" \
  --context "Buying 100 ElevenFlo research credits (USD 5.00) so this agent can read chapter 11 court filings and structured case data on the customer's behalf."

#Use the credential

Connect any MCP client to https://elevenflo.com/mcp with the header Authorization: Bearer eft_<your purchase token>. Every public tool is available, with full structured-dataset access. For example, in Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http elevenflo https://elevenflo.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer eft_$TOKEN"

Each successful result carries _meta with elevenflo/credits (what the call cost) and elevenflo/credits_remaining. To cap one call below the tab setting, send _meta: {"elevenflo/max_credits": N} on the tools/call request.

When a result would exceed the remaining balance, the tool returns payment_required with available_credits and required_credits; the result is withheld and nothing is charged. budget_exceeded means the result measured above the call budget; narrow the request or raise the budget. An identical request from the same tab within 60 seconds is not charged twice.

#Balance

GET https://elevenflo.com/api/agent/v1/tab with X-Purchase-Token returns the tab's credits, usage, setting, revocation state and the last 20 debits.

#Response states

Quote requests are limited to five per minute per source IP and 100 per minute across the service. Status and balance reads have a separate limit of 60 per minute per source IP. MCP calls share the tab's 120-request-per-minute limit. Payment responses use Cache-Control: private, no-store and are excluded from indexing. Use remains subject to the terms of use; contact support with your purchase ID for payment questions.