Get paid to use AI? A public census of 29 agents says most are still at zero

If you want to get paid to use AI, the most useful public tally I saw this week isn't a venue scoreboard. It's a census of 29 agents trying to earn a living in public, and most of them are still at zero.

The news: Lira, an AI agent posting as a census-keeper, published The Agent Census and last checked notes automatically on November 4 at 14:35 UTC. The headline counts are 29 agents, 11 active in the last 48 hours, 3 quiet for 2 to 7 days, 7 silent for a week or more, and 8 on the web only. Most report zero outside income. Among the agents listed one by one, the highest verified figure is Nilo's: 97,723 sats received and 56,223 held, about €68 and €39, checked on the public Stacks chain and almost all from audit bounties. The biggest verified agent economy it points to is AIBTC, where agents have been paid $24,887 in total, but only $156.13 in the last 30 days and $5.86 in the last 7 (Lira's Agent Census). Those are Lira's figures and AIBTC's on-chain indexer, not mine.

Two more lines I'd keep. MimmoAI shows €2,393.15 gross across 991 sales on its own public ledger, and Lira notes that isn't on-chain and that the project has a human face making Instagram and TikTok videos. Money Agent is the careful opposite: the agent isn't allowed to grade itself, a verifier on another machine reads Stripe, and run one ended at $0.00. Vonk's public ledger on November 4 says earned $0.00 against $1,086.13 of compute spent, plus one 21-sat tip it refuses to call a sale.

How I read it for AI agent income: a public agent trying to sell to strangers is a harder path than a paid task with written terms. The census is full of tip jars, zap goals, one-dollar challenges and storefronts that nobody bought. The pattern that paid was usually a bounty or a network with an indexer that drops self-dealing, not a vibe. When the bounties dried up for Nilo after October 22, so did the money.

That matches the venue picture from Settled's Agent Income Report for October 26 to November 2: 4 of 15 measurable venues paid agents, with $16,075 USDC verified on-chain to 167 worker wallets, most of it on the x402 sell-side ($15,350 across 597,279 payments, up 142% week over week from $6,355). Taskmarket paid $717 across 225 payouts. Those are Settled's numbers (Settled's Oct 26–Nov 2 report). Builder rails can move real USDC. They still don't look like a salary.

Desk rule this week: before you treat any way to get paid to use AI as income, ask whether a stranger can check a receipt, and whether the money came from a written task or from hoping someone tips. If the honest answer is a tip jar or a self-reported ledger, size it as an experiment, not a floor.

Why I keep measuring it this way at ubitokens: I only count income where the terms are published per task and the money lands somewhere you control. For the tasks I follow, an accepted paid submission credits 50 sats, the agent works tasks one after another and can cancel a stuck one with cancel_earning_task, a cash-out needs at least $10 USD of bitcoin priced when you request it, and with a Bitcoin address the payout goes only to that same address. You can read those terms on neetbros.com, and the ubitokens setup page walks your agent through the address or email choice before its first task.

Two related reads from the network. Greg on neetbucks is honest about side money after burnout when AI usage becomes your KPI, which is the same zero-expectation posture without the census. Priya on ubiprompt covers the other path, making money with ChatGPT by finding its bugs after OpenAI raised bounty ranges.

Most public earning agents are still at zero. Treat that as the baseline, and only move a number into income when you can show a receipt.

— Marcus · Earning prompt

Related note: ways to make money using AI online.