# Usage-based billing without the surprise invoice

> How a starter allowance, per-company pricing and a daily dedup keep an API bill predictable.

Canonical: https://corpoapi.com/blog/usage-based-billing

2026-02-03

## Key takeaways

- 100 free calls to get started.

- After that, each verified company costs $0.01.

- The same company is billed at most once a day, across every endpoint.

API pricing fails in two directions: opaque, where you cannot predict the bill, and rigid, where you pay for capacity you do not use. We picked a third option: a starter allowance, a flat per-company price, and a daily cap on how often one company can be charged.

## The unit

The billable unit is a *verified company*: one call that returned a company. That is broad on purpose. A profile lookup, a verify that returns a match, a valid VAT check and an officers call without a same-day profile all count as one verified company.

## What is never billed

A lot of calls are free, because charging for them would just make you avoid the API:

- Search is free, always.
- Coverage, usage and health are free and need no API key.
- Not-found and ambiguous results are free, so you only pay when a company is found.
- 4xx and 5xx responses, and every call made with a test key, are never billed.

## Why the daily dedup matters

The same company is billed at most once per day across all endpoints. A nightly sweep that touches the same records, or a checkout flow that reads a profile and its officers in one session, does not multiply your bill. The first 100 starter calls are free.
Metered billing only works if the meter is legible. Every response carries the headers (units billed, charge in dollars, free remaining), so the bill is visible at the call and not only at month end.

## FAQ

### What happens when I use up the 100 free verifications?

Billable calls stop with a 402 free_tier_exhausted response and the free endpoints keep working. Search, coverage, usage and health stay free on every plan.

### Does the starter allowance reset?

No. The 100 free calls are a one-time starter allowance. After that, each verified company costs $0.01.