Credits

SocialCrawl uses a credit-based, pay-as-you-go billing model. Every request costs credits based on the endpoint's tier. No time-based rate limits — just a concurrency ceiling of 50 simultaneous requests per API key.

How much does each request cost?

For the cost of every individual endpoint — including bundle endpoints like /v1/search/everywhere that use a flat fee — see Endpoint pricing.

Welcome bonus

Every new account receives 100 free credits on signup — enough to try every standard endpoint without attaching a payment method. The bonus appears in your transaction history as a bonus entry.

How do I check my credit balance?

Three ways, depending on context:

1. Every API response includes credits_remaining and an X-Credits-Remaining header

2. Meta endpoint — GET /v1/credits/balance (0 credits, API-key auth) returns the balance plus a summary of recent deductions:

   {
     "success": true,
     "platform": "meta",
     "endpoint": "/v1/credits/balance",
     "data": {
       "balance": 8432,
       "recent_deductions": { "last_24h": 128, "last_7d": 1043 }
     },
     "credits_used": 0,
     "credits_remaining": 8432,
     "request_id": "req-abc123",
     "cached": false
   }

3. Dashboard — Usage and Activity Logs pages show balance, history, and per-endpoint breakdowns

Are cache hits free?

Yes. A response served from cache ("cached": true, X-Cache: HIT) costs 0 credits: no transaction row is written and your balance is unchanged. We already paid the upstream cost when we fetched the original, so charging you again for the same data would be double-billing.

Caching is on by default and is the single biggest lever for keeping your bill down. For the freshness windows per data type, the shared-across-account model, and how to force a guaranteed-live fetch when you need one, see the Caching page.

When are credits refunded?

Credits are automatically refunded when a paid request cannot complete successfully:

Refunds happen atomically inside the router — your balance is restored before the error envelope returns.

Idempotent retries don't double-charge

If you send an Idempotency-Key header, we guarantee a single charge per key. Replayed requests return the original response verbatim, deduct 0 new credits, and include X-Idempotent-Replay: true. See Response Schema for headers and the Error Handling page for conflict behaviour.

Topping up

Buy credit packs in Dashboard → Billing. Packs are one-time purchases (no subscriptions):

Credits do not expire. Every purchase, deduction, refund, and bonus is recorded on your transaction history.