[RFC] Agent-native payment gating for Bright Data MCP — pay-per-scrape via x402/MPP #126

What this proposes

Adding pay-per-call payment gating to Bright Data MCP so AI agents can pay for web data access directly — without requiring a human-managed Bright Data account for every deployment.

Bright Data already has per-request pricing. This extends that model to agent-native payments: agents pay per scrape/search via x402 (USDC on Base) or MPP (Stripe's Machine Payments Protocol), settled directly to the operator — no credit card, no monthly billing cycle, no human in the billing loop.

Working demo

I've built a payment-gated fork: github.com/tomopay/brightdata-mcp

It adds a single payment-gated entry point using @tomopay/gateway. The original code is untouched — purely additive.

import { withPayments } from "@tomopay/gateway";

const { server: gatedServer } = withPayments(server, {
  payTo: process.env.TOMOPAY_ADDRESS,
  protocols: ["x402", "mpp"],
  pricing: {
    scrape_as_markdown: { amount: 10, currency: "USD" },  // $0.10/scrape
    search_engine:      { amount: 10, currency: "USD" },  // $0.10/search
    scraping_browser_navigate: { amount: 50, currency: "USD" }, // $0.50/session
  }
});

gatedServer.start({ transportType: "stdio" });

Why this matters for Bright Data

• Bright Data already thinks in per-request pricing — you have pricing tiers documented in the README. Agent-native payment rails are the next step.
• Opens a new distribution channel. MCP operators can deploy Bright Data scraping without managing API key billing for every downstream agent.
• Zero breaking changes. Existing users are unaffected. This is a separate entry point for operators who want to enable agent-native payments.

Current status

Working fork is live. Happy to discuss integration path or submit a PR if there's interest.