> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.influship.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Pricing
> Credit-based pricing for the Influship API
# Pricing
The Influship API uses credits at **\$0.01 per credit**. You pay for the endpoints you call and the results you receive — nothing else.
Failed requests (`401`, `402`, `429`, `400`) are never charged.
## Price Table
| Endpoint | Cost model | Credits | Effective price |
| ---------------------------------------- | ---------------------------- | ---------------: | ------------------------: |
| `POST /v1/search` | Base + per creator delivered | `25 + 2/creator` | `\$0.25 + \$0.02/creator` |
| `GET /v1/search/{id}` | Free pagination | `0` | `\$0.00` |
| `POST /v1/creators/lookalike` | Per creator delivered | `1.5/creator` | `\$0.015/creator` |
| `POST /v1/creators/match` | Per creator scored | `1/creator` | `\$0.01/creator` |
| `GET /v1/creators/{id}` | Per request | `0.1` | `\$0.001` |
| `GET /v1/creators/autocomplete` | Per request | `0.05` | `\$0.0005` |
| `GET /v1/profiles/{platform}/{username}` | Per request | `0.1` | `\$0.001` |
| `POST /v1/profiles/lookup` | Per profile found | `0.1/profile` | `\$0.001/profile` |
| `GET /v1/posts` | Per post returned | `0.05/post` | `\$0.0005/post` |
| Live scraping endpoints | Per request or returned item | `0.5` | `\$0.005` |
## Why Search Has a Base Fee
Search runs AI inference on every query — your natural language input is processed through embedding models and matched against the creator index. The 25-credit base fee covers that compute cost, regardless of how many results match. The per-creator fee scales with what you actually receive.
This means a search that finds 3 results costs less than one that finds 25, even though the same inference ran on both.
## Search Pricing in Detail
* Base fee: **25 credits** per search
* Per creator: **2 credits** per delivered result
* Limit sets the cap on how many results the search session can return
* Pagination via `GET /v1/search/{id}` is free
| Scenario | Credits | Cost |
| ---------------------------------- | ------: | -----: |
| `limit: 5`, 5 creators delivered | 35 | \$0.35 |
| `limit: 10`, 7 creators delivered | 39 | \$0.39 |
| `limit: 10`, 10 creators delivered | 45 | \$0.45 |
| `limit: 25`, 20 creators delivered | 65 | \$0.65 |
| `limit: 25`, 25 creators delivered | 75 | \$0.75 |
## What Does a Typical Month Cost?
Building a creator discovery tool, running 100 searches/month with some lookups and matching.
```
100 searches (limit: 10 avg) = 4,500 credits
200 creator lookups = 20 credits
50 match scorings (5 creators each) = 250 credits
─────────────────────────────────────
Total = 4,770 credits
Monthly cost = $47.70
```
Running campaigns for multiple clients, 500 searches/month with heavy lookalike usage.
```
500 searches (limit: 15 avg) = 27,500 credits
1,000 creator lookups = 100 credits
200 lookalike searches (15 results) = 4,500 credits
500 match scorings (10 creators) = 5,000 credits
─────────────────────────────────────
Total = 37,100 credits
Monthly cost = $371.00
```
Integrating search into a product, 5,000+ searches/month with autocomplete.
```
5,000 searches (limit: 10 avg) = 225,000 credits
50,000 autocomplete requests = 2,500 credits
10,000 creator lookups = 1,000 credits
1,000 lookalike searches (20 results)= 30,000 credits
─────────────────────────────────────
Total = 258,500 credits
Monthly cost = $2,585.00
```
At this volume, reach out for volume pricing — [elliot@influship.com](mailto:elliot@influship.com).
## Free Tier
Every new account starts with credits to explore the API. The free tier includes:
* **1,500 credits/hour** rate limit budget
* **150 credits/minute** rate limit budget
* Credits to run searches, lookups, and match scoring
This is enough to prototype an integration, test query quality, and evaluate the response format before committing to a paid plan. Once you make your first payment, your account upgrades to Tier 1 with higher rate limits.
See [Rate Limits & Tiers](/concepts/quotas-and-limits) for the full tier breakdown.
## Track Cost Per Request
Every successful response includes billing headers:
```http theme={null}
X-Credits-Charged: 45.00
X-Credits-Features: creators.search
X-Billing-Plan: free
RateLimit-Remaining-Minute: 105
```
```typescript TypeScript theme={null}
const response = await fetch('https://api.influship.com/v1/search', {
method: 'POST',
headers: { 'X-API-Key': API_KEY, 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
body: JSON.stringify({ query: 'fitness creators', limit: 10 }),
});
const charged = response.headers.get('X-Credits-Charged');
const feature = response.headers.get('X-Credits-Features');
console.log(`Charged ${charged} credits for ${feature}`);
```
```python Python theme={null}
response = requests.post(
'https://api.influship.com/v1/search',
headers={'X-API-Key': API_KEY},
json={'query': 'fitness creators', 'limit': 10},
)
print(f"Charged {response.headers['X-Credits-Charged']} credits")
print(f"Feature: {response.headers['X-Credits-Features']}")
```
## What Tiers Change
Trust tiers do not change endpoint prices. They change your rate-limit budgets and billing thresholds. See [Rate Limits & Tiers](/concepts/quotas-and-limits) for details.
## Cost Controls
* **Keep search `limit` tight.** Start with 5-10 while prototyping. Results past the top 15-20 are usually lower relevance anyway.
* **Cache creator and profile lookups.** Creator data doesn't change often — caching saves credits and latency.
* **Use autocomplete for search-as-you-type.** At 0.05 credits per request, it's 500x cheaper than running a full search on every keystroke.
* **Batch known work.** If you have a list of usernames, use `POST /v1/profiles/lookup` instead of individual lookups.
Failed requests are never billed. This includes:
* `401` — invalid or missing API key
* `402` — billing suspended
* `429` — rate limit exceeded
* `400` — validation errors (bad request body, missing fields)
Pagination via `GET /v1/search/{id}` is also free — you're stepping through results you already paid for.
There are no monthly credit allocations or rollover mechanics. Credits are charged per request as you use them. Your bill reflects actual usage.
You get a `429` response. No credits are charged for rate-limited requests. Wait for the reset window or reduce your request rate. See [Rate Limits & Tiers](/concepts/quotas-and-limits).
**Enterprise customers** may have custom pricing, rate limits, and billing terms negotiated outside the standard tiers. If your current plan doesn't reflect your agreement, reach out at [elliot@influship.com](mailto:elliot@influship.com).
If you're an early-stage startup, check out the [startup program](mailto:elliot@influship.com) for discounted access.