Zerker vs Cloudflare
x402 is not the difference.
Cloudflare's Agents SDK ships x402 today: paidTool on the server, agents/x402 on the client. The difference is not payments. The difference is that Cloudflare runs on Cloudflare.
Self-host it. Charge for it. Keep payment keys yours. Zerker combines self-hosting, payment gating, and no custody in one open-source Gateway.
Start here
Where Cloudflare stops.
Everything Cloudflare offers runs on Cloudflare's network. Zerker runs on hardware you choose. If nothing in your world forbids running on someone else's edge, zero operations beats self-hosting almost every time.
Pick Cloudflare if
- Your traffic is already behind Cloudflare and this is one more product on the account
- You want zero operational burden — no host, no database, no upgrade path to own
- You want their facilitator's scale and counterparty trust rather than your own
- No rule in your business dictates where the software runs or who holds the keys
Pick Zerker if
- You structurally cannot run on a third-party edge — regulated, air-gapped, or under an EU data-residency rule
- You need to read the source of the thing standing between a caller and your money
- You want no third party in the payment path by default, not merely a reputable one
- You want the option to leave without a migration, because it's your binary on your hardware
Where they're ahead
What Cloudflare does better.
Global edge, no operations to own, a facilitator a finance team will accept, and an SDK that is live and documented today. On capability per hour of effort, they win.
The turnkey product is not shipped. The Monetization Gateway opened its waitlist on 1 July 2026 with no general-availability date and no published pricing. The SDK path is available now. The no-code path is not.
Side by side
Side by side.
| Cloudflare | Zerker | |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Managed SaaS, on their edge, only | Your hardware, your cloud, your air-gapped rack |
| x402 today | Shipped, via the Agents SDK | Shipped, as a gate — verify before forwarding |
| Turnkey monetization | Monetization Gateway — waitlist since 1 Jul 2026, no GA date, no pricing | The gate is shipped and Apache-2.0. Settlement remains in progress |
| Source available | No | Apache-2.0, all of it |
| Data residency | Wherever their edge decides | Wherever you put the binary |
| Operational burden | None | Yours — a process and a Postgres |
| Scale | Planetary, without you thinking about it | Whatever you provision |
| If you want to leave | A migration | You already have the binary and the database |
The actual difference
Who cannot use Cloudflare.
A bank whose regulator requires the payment path to be auditable and on-premise. A European operator under a residency rule. A defence or healthcare deployment with no egress. For them, managed SaaS on someone else's edge is not an option.
The regulated buyer forced that design. Everyone else gets the benefit: a payment check with nothing worth stealing. No key to leak, no endpoint to spoof, no third party whose breach becomes your incident.
If you are not in that set, use Cloudflare.
Sources
Compared against publicly available information on 3 August 2026. Cloudflare's shipped x402 support: Agents SDK payments docs. The turnkey product and its waitlist: Announcing the Monetization Gateway. If any of this has changed, open an issue and we'll correct the page.