I Like Individually Priced API Resources That Flex and Scale

On a regular basis I review my API consumption to evaluate how I’m using various APIs, and what I’m paying for them. I depend on around 20 APIs to make API Evangelist work, and I need to make sure I’m using them to their fullest potential while also being mindful of budget.

As a part of my regular review, I am looking at the differences in pricing between three key services:

  • FullContact API - I use FullContact for all my company and individual contact intelligence. I go through phases of light or heavy use depending on research projects I have going on. Full Contact provides me with per API call rates depending on the endpoint and call volume, and they limit me between four packages Trying It out (Free), Getting Started ($19/month), Gaining Traction ($99/month) and Rolling ($499/month)
  • Alchemy API - I use Alchemy API to primarily pull text content from blog posts, so I can use it internally for indexing. With Alchemy I get access to three packages Free, Small Business ($250.00) and Basic ($800.00)
  • AWS APIs - I use AWS for all my computer, storage, database and DNS API services. With AWS I pay by the resource, bandwidth transfer and storage and the other parts and pieces or specific actions in cloud computing. There are no packages, just modular API resources I use and get billed for.

I’m just one use case, but figured I’d share my thoughts on how I use these three API resources within my little world.

For Full Contact the jump from $19/month to $99/month isn’t too bad. I’ll lump all my processing together into a single month and get lots of work done. So I tend to toggle each month between these two tiers based upon my needs.

For Alchemy API I operate within the free tier and stick with the rate limit of 1,000 API calls per day. If a blog post doesn’t get pulled because I hit my limit, I queue it for another day when I have room within my daily limit. The jump from zero to $250.00 / month is really just too big of a jump for me to make.

My Amazon Web Services bill runs between $250.00 and $1,000.00 / month. Depending on how much traffic, harvesting, processing and other crazy stuff I’m doing. I have a buffet of compute, storage, database, IP address, monitoring,DNS and other cloud computing modules that I have developed and associated with pricing in my head, so that I can make decisions in the moment about whether I can afford to process a bunch of data, launch new API, website etc.

I have a few good friends in the API space that feel API rate limits stimulate creativity, innovation and work-arounds. I agree with that statement, and think every API has to understand its own consumer and make the decision they feel is best. But in the end, I personally like single API resource pricing based upon units, that I can scale infinitely as needed in any moment. I’m am more likely to integrate services into my world when they are independent bite size chunks, with pricing not restricted by other services or service tiers. Each module tends to have different value in my world and I like to make independent decisions about how to use just that resource, disconnected from all the other resources.

The world is starting to look different when I depend on 10-20 APIs vs 1-2 APIs, and I can imagine when I reach the point where I'm depending on 100-200 APIs I will have an even greater need to have API resources be priced independent of other services or limiting pricing tiers.