API pricing

Questions people ask before buying

What counts as a call?

One billable request against a live key. Requests we failed to serve (5xx) and requests we rejected for rate limiting (429) are not billed — charging for our own failures is indefensible.

Do test keys count?

No. Test keys read the same data, are metered separately and are never billed, so an integration suite cannot run up a bill.

What happens when I hit the monthly quota?

Calls return 429 with a quota_exceeded error until the 1st of the next month, UTC. Nothing is billed beyond the plan, and no overage is charged silently.

What happens if a subscription lapses?

Access degrades to the free tier rather than cutting off. A billing problem should not read as an outage to your own users.

Is there a rate limit as well as a quota?

Yes, and they are separate. The quota is calls per calendar month; the rate limit is sustained requests per minute. Both are listed above and both are enforced.

What does the free tier leave out?

Bulk and radius endpoints. Everything else — the same records, the same atlas, the same freshness — is identical to the paid plans.

Do you cover all fifty states?

No, and no plan changes that. We ingest the official state registries that publish openly, and that is a minority of US states today. Every plan reads the same coverage, so start on the free tier and check whether we hold what you need before paying for volume. The coverage endpoint returns the geographic footprint of every source we hold, so your own product can say "no data for this area" instead of showing a blank map that reads as an all-clear.

Can I use this for background checks or tenant screening?

Not as a national product, and this is a legal constraint rather than a pricing one. Several US jurisdictions limit by statute what their registry data may be used for — California authorises use only to protect a person at risk and expressly prohibits employment, housing, credit and insurance uses — so records from those jurisdictions are withheld for screening purposes regardless of plan. The API tells you how many records were withheld and under what citation rather than silently returning a short list.

Is this FCRA-compliant?

No. This is not a consumer report and we are not a consumer reporting agency. It must not be used for decisions about employment, housing, credit or insurance eligibility. The FTC has brought enforcement actions over inaccuracy in consumer report information drawn from sex offender registry records, so this is a live exposure rather than boilerplate.

Do I need to talk to anyone to start?

No. The free tier needs no payment method and no conversation — 1,000 calls a month against the same data every paid plan reads. It exists so you can find out whether we cover what you need before speaking to us.

Can I get a key per environment?

Yes. Every plan allows more than one live key, and the plan table above lists how many. Keys carry scopes and can optionally be pinned to an IP allowlist or a set of origins. A key is shown once when it is created — we store only a hash — so a lost key is rotated rather than recovered.

How fresh is the data?

Records reflect what a source published when we last synced it and may lag it. Per-jurisdiction freshness is on the jurisdictions endpoint and every detail response carries a link back to the originating registry, which remains authoritative for its own records.

Coverage is partial and stated plainly on the API overview, and the jurisdictions whose records we withhold, with the citation for each, are on the datasets page. Read both before you pick a plan — the free tier exists so you can confirm we hold what you need before paying for volume.