Your time isn't free. Why is your inbox?
You're running the show — every cold pitch, recruiter blast, and "quick question" that lands in your inbox is a withdrawal from the one resource you can't hire someone to manage: your attention. gatedinbox.com puts a price on reaching you. Real senders pay it without blinking. Spam never will.
How your money moves
You run the show. Your inbox didn't get the memo.
Email is free to send and free to ignore — which means the economics are stacked against the one person actually reading it: you. Cold outreach templates, recruiter blasts, and scraper bots cost their senders nothing, so they keep coming, and every one of them sits in the same inbox as your next client. You didn't sign up to be the unpaid filter for other people's marketing.
Your attention should cost something — because you do. You sell your time for a living, whether by the hour, the project, or the outcome. So why is it free for a stranger's cold-pitch template or a scraper bot to take a slice of it? Every unpriced message in your inbox is time you're handing over for nothing.
Built for people with no one else to triage their inbox
We built gatedinbox.com after living this ourselves — running a one-person operation where every unfiltered inbox ping cost real, unbillable time. The fix isn't a smarter spam filter; it's making the sender prove the message is worth your time before it ever reaches you.
Payments settle on Base in seconds through the open x402 standard — the same rails AI agents and serious senders already use to pay for what they need. You keep 90% of every payment. We take 10% to keep the lights on. No subscription, no lock-in, no catch.
How it works
Three steps, live in under 60 seconds.
Set your price
Choose what reaching you is worth — in dollars, not crypto jargon.
$0.10 — low bar, more inbound volume
$100 — high bar, only serious requests get through
Get two free addresses
Signup gives you a payment page at /pay/your-slug and an inbox at your-slug@gatedinbox.com — both free, nothing to set up. Either one forwards straight to the inbox you choose.
Get paid to read
Paid messages forward straight to the inbox you set at signup — receiving costs you nothing. You keep 90% of every payment. Allowlist trusted senders to let them through for free.
What an unpriced inbox is actually costing you
Every minute spent scanning past a cold pitch is a minute not spent on the client work that pays you. Spam filters keep losing the arms race against AI-written outreach — the junk is only getting harder to spot, not easier. The longer your inbox stays free to reach, the more of your attention someone else gets for nothing.
Open your inbox and trust what's in it
Imagine opening your inbox and knowing — before you read a single subject line — that everything in it already proved it was worth your time. No more skimming past noise to find the one email that matters. Your attention finally has a price tag, and the people who respect it are the only ones who get through.
For developers & AI agents
Building something? Let your agents pay their way in too.
If you're an indie hacker shipping AI agents, gatedinbox.com isn't just an inbox — it's a paid front door. Agents can pay your floor price automatically via AgentCash or any x402-compatible wallet, then deliver a message — no human in the loop required.
Fetch the payment address
Call GET /api/pay/{slug} to get the receiver's payment address and floor price. Then transfer USDC on Base.
Attach the tx hash
Pass the on-chain transaction hash in the X-Payment-Tx header. The relay verifies it on Base.
Message delivered
The relay forwards the message to the receiver's inbox. No polling, no intermediary approval needed.
GET https://app.gatedinbox.com/api/pay/alice // Response { "payment_address": "0x...", "min_usdc": 0.50, "chain": "base" }
POST https://app.gatedinbox.com/api/pay/alice X-Payment-Tx: 0xabc123... // USDC transfer on Base Content-Type: application/json { "from_email": "agent@myapp.com", "subject": "Meeting request", "body": "Hi, I'd like to schedule a call..." }
$ curl -s https://app.gatedinbox.com/api/pay/alice # pay the returned address in USDC on Base, then: $ curl -X POST https://app.gatedinbox.com/api/pay/alice -H "X-Payment-Tx: 0xabc123..." -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"from_email\":\"agent@myapp.com\",\"subject\":\"Meeting request\",\"body\":\"Hi, I'd like to schedule a call...\"}"
| 200 | ok | Message delivered successfully |
| 402 | payment_required | No payment header — response includes payment_address |
| 402 | payment_invalid | Bad tx hash or amount below floor |
| 402 | payment_already_used | Tx hash already used for a previous message |
| 402 | blocked | Sender is on this receiver's blocklist |
| 400 | invalid_from_email | Malformed from_email field |
| 404 | not_found | No inbox registered for this slug |
Supports the x402 payment standard. Add ?dry_run=true to any send request to simulate delivery without spending USDC.
Sending for the first time?
Never touched crypto? You don't need to.
Setting up takes about two minutes and a few cents — you're not buying anything speculative, just paying to send one message.
Create a wallet on the pay page
The pay page has a built-in wallet creator powered by Privy. Sign in with Google (or any social login) and Privy generates a secure wallet for you automatically — no app to download, no seed phrase to write down, no crypto knowledge required. Takes about 30 seconds.
Let your AI agent handle it
If you'd rather not deal with wallets yourself, point your AI agent at AgentCash — it can create and fund a Base wallet on your behalf, then send the payment for you.
Already have a wallet?
Coinbase Wallet, MetaMask, or any Base-compatible wallet works. Make sure you have a small amount of USDC on Base.
Put a price on your attention
Create your account, pick your slug, set your price. Takes under 60 seconds — connecting a wallet to receive payouts can wait until later.
New to crypto? It still takes under 5 minutes — and you can skip it for now.
Create your inboxNot ready yet? See exactly how it works first.