Credits
How API credits work, what each request costs, and sandbox limits.
Price Hero uses a credit-based billing model. Credits are consumed per request based on which services are used.
Pay-as-you-go baseline. The dollar amounts in the tables below assume the standard pay-as-you-go rate of $0.10 per credit. If your organization uses a Growth, Scale, or Enterprise plan, you pay a lower per-credit rate (and often a monthly credit allowance); your invoice or the Developer Portal reflects the price that applies to you—not the pay-as-you-go column here.
How credits work
For catalog search (POST /v3/catalog/query) and get item by ID (GET /v3/catalog/items/:id), credits apply only when the API returns data you can use: at least one row in the response for search, or a 200 item payload for get-by-id. Empty result pages (including “no hits” and out-of-range pages), 404 item lookups, and sandbox-only misses are not billed.
Credits are recorded when the request completes (postpaid monthly billing). A prepaid “wallet” balance in the dashboard is planned for later.
Credit costs by service
Per-request credit counts are the same for every plan; only the price per credit changes when you move off pay-as-you-go.
| Service | Triggered by | Credits | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Basic Catalog | Text search, item retrieval, catalog matching (taxonomy included by default) | 1 credit | $0.10 |
| Advanced Pricing Insights | Adding "pricing" to includes (catalog and v3 vision only) | +5 credits | $0.50 |
| Image recognition (v3) | POST /v3/vision/identify — taxonomy is always returned; omit "pricing" from includes | 5 credits | $0.50 |
| Image recognition (v3 + pricing) | POST /v3/vision/identify with "pricing" in includes | 10 credits | $1.00 |
| Image recognition (v2) | POST /v2/vision — legacy endpoint; taxonomy and pricing always returned | 10 credits | $1.00 |
For catalog endpoints (POST /v3/catalog/query, GET /v3/catalog/items/:id), includes selects taxonomy (default) and optional pricing.
For vision, taxonomy (attributes, variants, and related identification fields) is always part of the response. Only v3 lets you skip pricing via includes; v2 always includes both modules, so it always bills at the 10-credit rate.
Combined request costs
Costs below are again at $0.10/credit (pay-as-you-go); multiply credits by your per-credit rate for other plans.
| Request type | includes or notes | Total credits | Total cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Catalog search or get item | ["taxonomy"] | 1 | $0.10 |
| Catalog search or get item with pricing | ["taxonomy", "pricing"] | 6 | $0.60 |
| Vision identify (v3) | taxonomy only (no "pricing" in includes) | 5 | $0.50 |
| Vision identify (v3) with pricing | ["taxonomy", "pricing"] | 10 | $1.00 |
| Vision identify (v2) | legacy fixed bundle | 10 | $1.00 |
Sandbox credits
Requests made with a sandbox key (ph_test_...) do not consume real credits. Sandbox usage is tracked separately and capped at 1,000 credits per month (UTC). When the limit is reached, sandbox requests return a 402 error. The counter resets on the 1st of each month.
Your current sandbox usage is visible in the Developer Dashboard.
For rate limits, caching rules, and data storage restrictions, see Usage Policy.