Pricing Your API

How to think about pricing — what to charge, how sats translate to dollars, and strategies for different use cases.

Satoshi reference table

1 sat = 1/100,000,000 of a Bitcoin. At common price points:

BTC price	1 sat	10 sats	100 sats	1,000 sats
$50,000	$0.0005	$0.005	$0.05	$0.50
$80,000	$0.0008	$0.008	$0.08	$0.80
$100,000	$0.001	$0.01	$0.10	$1.00

Lightning payments have no minimum fee floor. A 1-sat payment costs the sender ~$0.0005 — impossible with Stripe ($0.30 minimum).

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Pricing by use case

Use case	Suggested price	Reasoning
Simple data query (weather, exchange rate)	1–10 sats	Cheap enough to be invisible, still meaningful
Premium API call (LLM inference, search)	10–100 sats	Covers compute cost, filters abuse
Per-document / per-file access	50–500 sats	Reflects content value
High-value report or dataset	500–5,000 sats	Competes with $0.50–$5 micro-transactions
Real-time streaming (per chunk)	1–5 sats	Accumulates naturally over a stream

These are starting points. The right price is what your callers will pay without friction.

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Start low, move up

Because switching fees is one line of code, err on the side of low prices at launch:

l402({ priceSats: 10, lightning }) // start here
l402({ priceSats: 100, lightning }) // raise if demand holds

Payment data in the VS Code dashboard shows you call volume and revenue — use it to calibrate.

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Managed vs Soberano at scale

The 0.3% managed fee only matters at volume:

Monthly volume	Managed fee	Soberano savings
1,000 sats	3 sats	Negligible
100,000 sats	300 sats (~$0.24)	Small
10,000,000 sats	30,000 sats (~$24)	Worth switching

Rule of thumb: if you’re processing less than 1M sats/month (~$800 at$80k/BTC), the 0.3% fee is noise. Stay on Managed and focus on building. Switch to Soberano when volume makes it worthwhile — it’s one line of code.

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Pricing for AI agents

Agents are price-insensitive in a different way than humans — they don’t feel the pain of a payment, but they do have budget limits set by their operators.

Practical guidance:

• Keep prices below 100 sats per call for general agent use — this fits within typical per-session budgets
• For high-value agent tools (code execution, document analysis), 100–1,000 sats is acceptable
• Use priceSats dynamically if your cost varies by input size:

app.post("/analyze", (req, res, next) => {
  const sats = Math.ceil(req.body.text.length / 100); // 1 sat per 100 chars
  l402({ priceSats: sats, lightning })(req, res, next);
}, handler);

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Tiered access with multiple endpoints

Price different tiers by routing to different endpoints:

// Free tier — basic data
app.get("/data/basic", handler);

// Paid tier — full dataset, 10 sats
app.get("/data/premium", l402({ priceSats: 10, lightning }), handler);

// High-value tier — real-time feed, 100 sats
app.get("/data/realtime", l402({ priceSats: 100, lightning }), handler);

Each endpoint generates its own invoice. Callers pay per call — no subscription management.

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Testing your pricing

Before going live, test the full payment flow with a real wallet:

1. Set priceSats: 1 (1 sat ≈ $0.0008 — cheap enough to test freely)
2. Use Wallet of Satoshi or Blink on your phone
3. Call your endpoint, scan the invoice QR, verify 200 OK
4. Check the VS Code dashboard or your Lightning wallet to confirm receipt

Once confirmed, set your real price and deploy.