An API credit is a prepaid unit of usage. You buy a pack, each call deducts from it, and you top up when it runs low. It is the main alternative to a monthly subscription with an allowance.
The two models can quote the same headline price and cost you very different amounts.
Credits against a subscription
| You pay | Unused capacity | Bursty workload | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Credits | Per pack, when you want | Usually carries over | Fine |
| Subscription | Every month | Often expires | Expensive |
The decisive question is not the price per call. It is what happens to what you don't use. A plan with a daily allowance that resets at midnight charges you for every night you were idle — one vendor's entry plan works out at ten times its headline unit cost if you only run three days a month. We showed that arithmetic on the EnsembleData page.
Not all credits cost one credit
Providers weight calls by how expensive they are to serve. A profile lookup might be one unit; a detailed lookup ten; a list of a hundred followers two. The published "credits per month" figure tells you nothing until you know the weights for the routes you will actually call.
Ask three things before buying:
- Do credits expire? A pack that lapses in 30 days is a subscription wearing different clothes.
- Am I charged for an empty result? A lookup that finds nothing still cost the provider work. Some charge, some do not, and the honest ones say which.
- Is there a rate limit on top? Credits answer how many; a rate limit answers how fast.
Credits that do not expire are not a favour
They are a pricing position. A provider whose credits carry over cannot count on idle months as revenue, so the per-call price usually sits a little higher. That is a fair trade and worth naming rather than treating as generosity.
What we do
One credit per call, credits do not expire, and a call that finds nothing costs nothing — the lookup happened, but you did not get data, so you are not charged for it. The exceptions are written on each route's own page, because "it depends" is not an answer a buyer can plan around. The free key is 1,000 credits a month with no card.