How billing works
How prepaid credit, per-match metering, and monthly grants fit together — what counts as a billable match, what doesn't, and how the quotas relate.
Firehose billing is prepaid credit. Your balance funds API stream usage; subscription tiers top it up automatically each month, and you can add more any time.
Matches are the billable unit
API stream consumption is metered per match at $5 per 1,000 matches. A match is a newly-seen page delivered on the stream (deduplicated, so re-delivering the same page isn't charged twice).
Your balance is the sum of your active credit grants. New organizations get a one-time $5 welcome grant. Paid subscription tiers add a monthly grant sized to their reviewable-match allowance (e.g. Starter's $10/mo funds 2,000 matches); monthly credit expires at the end of each period. Top-up credit never expires.
balance = sum of remaining credit across active grants
match delivered on /v1/stream ──▶ debit $0.005 from balance
balance hits $0 ──▶ new stream connections return 402What is and isn't metered as matches
| Activity | Metered as |
|---|---|
Pages delivered on GET /v1/stream | Matches ($5 / 1,000) |
| Reviewing matches in the dashboard feed | Plan's monthly reviewable-match cap (not credit) |
| URL Watch crawls | Plan's monthly check quota (not credit) |
So the feed and URL Watch draw down their own monthly quotas, while the API stream draws down prepaid credit. Three separate buckets.
Next steps
Errors & limits
What a 402 means and the rate limits that apply.
Plans & pricing
What each tier includes and how grants are sized.