---
title: Machine-Native Goods
description: The types of digital goods and services that agents consume in the headless economy, and the access models through which they are provisioned.
author: get-headless
section: foundations
order: 4
url: https://get-headless.ai/knowledge-base/machine-native-goods/
---

# Machine-Native Goods

The types of digital goods and services that agents consume in the headless economy, and the access models through which they are provisioned.

## What agents consume

The headless economy includes a wide range of goods consumed by software rather than navigated by humans.

### Capabilities and tools
- APIs
- CLI tools
- SDKs
- MCP-accessible capabilities
- Workflow primitives

### Data and knowledge
- Datasets
- Search and retrieval endpoints
- Content
- Documents
- Facts
- Structured knowledge

### Infrastructure
- Model inference
- Ranking and classification services
- Authentication and identity services
- Memory and state services
- Storage and hosting
- Observability and monitoring
- Compute

### Commerce
- Payment and settlement rails

## Access models

Machine-native goods may be accessed through:

- **Free access** — no cost, no authentication
- **Open source** — freely available code and tools
- **Public web access** — publicly available data and content
- **Freemium** — basic access free, premium features paid
- **Quota-based usage** — limited free tier, paid beyond limits
- **Subscription** — recurring payment for access
- **Per-call pricing** — pay per API invocation
- **Per-task pricing** — pay per completed task
- **Per-result pricing** — pay per successful outcome
- **Enterprise provisioning** — negotiated access and SLAs
- **Internal/private deployment** — self-hosted or on-premise
- **Sponsored or subsidized access** — third-party funded
- **Protocol-mediated settlement** — programmatic payment rails

---

Source: get-headless.ai — a publication on the headless economy.
Knowledge base index: https://get-headless.ai/api/knowledge-base.json