42 of the 59 checkout pages our agent reached carried a bot check, and under 5 of 59 showed one a visitor must see and solve. The bigger loss came earlier: 80 of 139 products never let our agent reach the checkout page at all (drives of 31 Oct 2026).
42 of 59 checkouts carried a bot check; under 5 made the agent solve one
On 31 Oct 2026, 42 of the 59 checkout pages our agent reached carried a bot check of some kind. Under 5 of 59 put a check on screen that a visitor had to solve. Our agent set out to buy the cheapest paid plan of 139 products, and 59 of 139 reached the checkout page.
Visible puzzles were rare on the checkouts reached; 80 of 139 products stopped our agent before the checkout page. For what bot checks do across the whole signup and login path, see Do bot checks stop AI agents?.
What an agent meets on the way to paying, step by step
To pay, our agent had to reach the plan page, load the checkout and get to the card form. 59 of 139 reached the checkout page and 42 of 139 reached the card form.
- Plan page reached. Whether an agent can read a price there is its own test: Can an AI agent read your pricing page?.
- Checkout page loads. 59 of 139 products got our agent to a checkout page; 80 of 139 did not.
- Who runs it. Stripe (Checkout or Elements) ran 41 of the 59 checkouts reached. Another payment company or the product itself ran 14 of 59.
- Bot check. 42 of 59 checkouts carried one, visible or not. Under 5 of 59 showed one a visitor must solve.
- Card form. 42 of 139 products got our agent as far as the card form.
- What sits beside the card form. 34 of 59 checkouts offered a wallet such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link or PayPal. 24 of 59 offered Link. Counted across all 139 products, not only the 59 checkouts, 8 of 139 also offered x402 next to the card checkout. A phone number was required on under 5 of 59.
Our drives of 201 products, 1 Oct to 1 Nov 2026 · The data
Data table
| Products | Out of | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Did not reach the checkout page | 80 | 139 | 58% |
| Reached the checkout page | 59 | 139 | 42% |
| Reached the card form | 42 | 139 | 30% |
| Offered x402 next to the card checkout | 8 | 139 | 6% |
Our drives of 201 products, 1 Oct to 1 Nov 2026 · The data
Data table
| Products | Out of | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bot check on the page, visible or not | 42 | 59 | 71% |
| Run by Stripe (Checkout or Elements) | 41 | 59 | 69% |
| Offered a wallet | 34 | 59 | 58% |
| Offered Link | 24 | 59 | 41% |
How far an agent gets once it is on the card form: Can an AI agent get through a card checkout?
Invisible checks and visible puzzles are different problems
Good: the checkout loads and any check runs in the background, with no challenge on screen. Bad: the checkout shows a challenge a visitor must solve; under 5 of 59 checkouts we reached did.
Decides by risk. Turnstile is Cloudflare’s CAPTCHA alternative, with non-interactive, invisible and managed widget modes (developers.cloudflare.com[1]). In managed mode it “Automatically decides whether to show a checkbox based on visitor risk level.” (developers.cloudflare.com[1]) It can run on a site without sending traffic through Cloudflare (developers.cloudflare.com[1]).
Forces work on the client. Bot Fight Mode “Issues computationally expensive challenges that force the requesting client to perform CPU-intensive calculations” (developers.cloudflare.com[2]). Cloudflare also states: “You cannot bypass or skip Bot Fight Mode using WAF custom rules or Page Rules.” (developers.cloudflare.com[2])
Which checks stopped our agent across products: Which bot checks stopped our AI agent?.
Keep the plan page and checkout open to agents you choose
The lever is in the bot settings in front of your pricing and checkout pages, not on the card form. Don’t remove bot protection; scope it.
- On Bot Fight Mode: Skip, Bypass and Allow actions have no effect, so you cannot exempt a checkout path for agents (developers.cloudflare.com[2]).
- On Super Bot Fight Mode: it comes with Pro, Business and Enterprise plans, and you set exceptions with a WAF custom rule using the Skip action (developers.cloudflare.com[3]). Add one for your pricing and checkout paths.
- With AI bot policies: for each preset you can block on all pages, block only on pages that show ads, or not block (developers.cloudflare.com[4]). Blocking on all pages also blocks your pricing and checkout pages.
Let signed agents in without opening the door to card testing
The IETF Web Bot Auth draft “describes a protocol for identifying automated traffic using [HTTP-MESSAGE-SIGNATURES].” (datatracker.ietf.org[5]) Automated clients sign their outbound requests, and the draft defines the Signature-Agent header (datatracker.ietf.org[5]). The individual draft (-02) has expired and was replaced by the working-group draft draft-ietf-webbotauth-httpsig-protocol (datatracker.ietf.org[5]).
On Cloudflare, a bot must host its public keys at /.well-known/http-message-signatures-directory and attach Signature-Agent, Signature-Input and Signature headers to its requests (developers.cloudflare.com[6]).
| Approach | What you let through |
|---|---|
| Allow by signature | Requests from agents that sign with keys they publish |
| Turn checks off on checkout | Every client, signed or not |
Our advice is the first row: keep your checks on, and let named agents through by signature. Which vendors accept a signed agent: Which bot checks let a signed agent in?
An agent payment rail beside the card form: what x402 covers for a plan today
8 of 139 products offered x402 next to their card checkout. x402 has no merged way to charge a subscription: a “subscribe” scheme is an open pull request, opened 9 Feb 2026 (github.com[7]). That proposal notes the cost of the current exact scheme: “A 12-month subscription would require 12 separate client signatures.” (github.com[7])
On cost, the CDP Facilitator gives the first 1,000 on-chain transactions each month free, then each additional on-chain transaction costs $0.001 (docs.cdp.coinbase.com[8]).
- Per-call or usage pay: under the exact scheme, each payment takes its own client signature (github.com[7]).
- A recurring plan: keep the card checkout as the main path.
- Stablecoin subscriptions: Stripe offers them (USDC on Base and Polygon) through its own smart contract, separate from x402, in private preview for US-based businesses (stripe.com[9]).
More on these rails: Can an AI agent pay with x402 or MPP? and Can an AI agent pay per call?
Checklist, in the order agents fail
- Show the price on the plan page without a login.
- Make sure the checkout URL loads for an agent.
- Keep those paths off Bot Fight Mode, which takes no exceptions (developers.cloudflare.com[2]), or add a Skip rule under Super Bot Fight Mode (developers.cloudflare.com[3]).
- Don’t set an AI bot policy to block on all pages if agents should reach pricing and checkout (developers.cloudflare.com[4]).
- Run Turnstile in managed or invisible mode rather than forcing a puzzle (developers.cloudflare.com[1]).
- Accept signed requests through Web Bot Auth (developers.cloudflare.com[6]).
- Offer x402 for usage or per-call pay, and keep the card checkout for the plan: x402 subscriptions are still an open proposal (github.com[7]).
- Ask an agent to buy one of your paid plans once and record the step where it stops.
All pay-step research: Can an AI agent pay for software?
How we measured
On 31 Oct 2026 our agent set out to buy the cheapest paid plan on 139 of the 193 products we drove. For each we recorded whether it reached the checkout page and the card form, who ran the checkout, whether a bot check was on the page and whether a visitor had to solve it, phone fields, wallets and x402 beside the card form. A bot check counts as present whether visible or not. Counts under 5 are shown as “under 5”. Full method: /method.