Cost Guide

On-Chain Monitoring Costs

CORTX runs real payments through your x402 endpoint — that means real USDC on Base mainnet leaves your wallet on every check. This guide explains exactly what costs money, how to calculate your expected spend, and how to keep it under control.

Per-check cost

endpoint price

What the endpoint charges, paid in USDC

Default daily cap

$1.00

Checks stop when cap is reached

Default monthly cap

$10.00

Resets on the 1st of each month

What Costs Money

Only one stage in the 7-stage pipeline triggers an actual payment: payment. All other stages are free HTTP calls or local computation.

availabilityHTTP GET — freeFREE

payment_termsReads 402 response header — freeFREE

price_checkLocal comparison — freeFREE

paymentSigns & submits EIP-3009 USDC transfer — costs the endpoint priceCOSTS

deliveryHTTP GET with X-Payment header — free (payment already sent)FREE

json_parseLocal parse — freeFREE

schema_validationLocal AJV validation — freeFREE

Important: If the check fails at stage 4 (payment) or earlier, no payment is sent. If it fails at stages 5–7 after a successful payment, the USDC has already left your wallet — the endpoint received it.

Cost Matrix

Your total cost = endpoint price × checks per day. Use this table to plan your wallet balance before enabling a service.

Price / call	Interval	Calls/day	Daily cost	Monthly cost
$0.01	5 min	288	$2.88	$86.40
$0.01	10 min	144	$1.44	$43.20
$0.01	15 min	96	$0.96	$28.80
$0.01	30 min	48	$0.48	$14.40
$0.05	5 min	288	$14.40	$432.00
$0.05	15 min	96	$4.80	$144.00
$0.05	30 min	48	$2.40	$72.00
$0.10	5 min	288	$28.80	$864.00
$0.10	15 min	96	$9.60	$288.00
$0.10	60 min	24	$2.40	$72.00
$1.00	60 min	24	$24.00	$720.00
$5.00	60 min	24	$120.00	$3.6k

Under $10/month

$10–$50/month

Over $50/month

Spend Caps

CORTX enforces cumulative caps across all your services. When a cap is hit, checks are skipped silently — no incident opens — and resume automatically when the cap resets.

Daily cap

$1.00

CORTX_DAILY_SPEND_CAP_USDC

Resets at UTC midnight

Monthly cap

$10.00

CORTX_MONTHLY_SPEND_CAP_USDC

Resets on 1st of month (UTC)

Override caps by setting the env vars in your Vercel project settings. For example, to allow $5/day and $50/month:

CORTX_DAILY_SPEND_CAP_USDC=5.00
CORTX_MONTHLY_SPEND_CAP_USDC=50.00

Wallet Planning

Your CORTX test wallet should hold enough USDC to cover at least a few days of checks — ideally a full month if you want zero interruptions.

Minimal

$5 USDC

Hobby / low-frequency checks ($0.01 at 30 min intervals)

Standard

$25 USDC

1–3 services at typical rates ($0.01–$0.10 at 5–15 min)

High-freq

$100 USDC

Multiple services at high frequency or high price-per-call

Never use your main wallet. The private key lives in an env var. Create a dedicated test wallet, fund it minimally, and treat it as disposable. The CORTX admin dashboard shows live balance and daily/monthly spend so you can top up before you run dry.

Best Practices

Start with a long interval

Begin at 15–30 minutes and shorten as needed. A 5-minute interval costs 3× more than 15 minutes for the same endpoint. You can always reduce the interval if you need faster incident detection.

Set max price tighter than you think

Your Max Price field is the ceiling CORTX will pay per check. Set it 10–20% above expected price — enough headroom for rounding, not enough for a surprise price increase to drain your wallet unnoticed.

Check the cost matrix before enabling

Calculate daily and monthly cost before saving a service. A $5/call endpoint checked hourly costs $3,600/month. Raise the daily cap explicitly if you accept that cost — don't let the default cap silently cut off your monitoring.

Monitor the admin dashboard

The Admin page shows live USDC balance, today's spend vs daily cap, and monthly spend vs monthly cap. Check it after enabling a new service and again after 24 hours to confirm costs are what you expected.

Keep cap resets in mind

Daily caps reset at UTC midnight, monthly caps on the 1st. A service that hits the daily cap at 6pm will have 6 hours of missed checks. If that gap is unacceptable, raise the cap.

Coordinate with the endpoint owner

If you're monitoring an endpoint you don't own, let the provider know. CORTX makes real payments and the provider receives them. They may offer a monitoring-specific key, reduced price, or a refund arrangement.