Developer Wraps Pay-Per-Call APIs in MCP Server, Joins Official Registry for Free

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A developer who had failed to earn revenue from REST-based pay-per-call APIs repackaged them as tools inside a single MCP server using the streamable-HTTP transport. The server uses the x402 protocol to charge USDC micropayments only when an agent actually invokes a tool, while keeping discovery methods like tools/list and initialize free. Three tools are offered — a QR code generator, an image processor, and an LLM-backed text analyser — priced between $0.01 and $0.02 per call. The server was listed on the official MCP Registry without a GitHub account by using HTTP-based Ed25519 key authentication tied to a free sslip.io hostname on a $4 VPS. The developer concludes that packaging APIs as MCP tools, rather than REST endpoints, is critical for reaching AI agents as customers.

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