API pricing

One credit buys one record, not one HTTP call. A request that hands back a hundred startup profiles costs a hundred credits whether you asked for them in one page or in twenty; a request that only resolves a name to an id costs one.

Plans

Get a key — 500 free credits   Talk to us about a plan

What a request costs

credits = max(1, ceil( base + records × credits_per_record × (1 + 0.25 × expands) ))

Endpoints fall into seven groups. The group decides the two numbers in that formula.

Worked examples

Rules worth knowing

• Errors are free. A 401, 403, 404, 429 or 500 costs nothing.
• A request that matched nothing still costs 1. The query ran.
• Each $expand adds 25% to the per-record weight, because it puts another record's worth of data on every row.
• Page size never changes the price of a record. Ten pages of ten cost the same as one page of a hundred, so page at whatever size suits you.
• You are charged before the response is built, then refunded. A request that reserves a hundred credits and returns three rows is settled back to three. The X-Credits-Charged header on the response is the final figure.

Knowing where you stand

Every metered response carries:

X-RateLimit-Limit:     15000      monthly credits on your plan
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 14211      credits left, after this request
X-RateLimit-Reset:     1767225600 unix seconds until the grant refills
X-Credits-Charged:     100        what this request actually cost

GET https://parsers.vc/api/v1/usage reports the balance and the last 30 days, and GET https://vcapi.parsers.vc/v2/pricing returns this whole page as JSON — plan list, group weights, and the price of every endpoint — so an agent can budget a job before it starts. Both are free.

Running out

On Free, zero means zero: the API answers 429 with Retry-After and the credits refill on the first of the month.

On a paid plan the monthly credits are a subscription, not a ceiling. Past them the API keeps answering and the extra records are billed by actual use at the plan's overage rate, on the next invoice. Each account has a spending cap — twice the monthly allowance unless you ask for more — so a runaway script cannot generate an unbounded bill. Your account page shows where the cap stands; to move it, write to [email protected] and we will raise it.

A refusal names the shortfall, so an agent can adapt instead of retrying:

HTTP/1.1 429 Too Many Requests
Retry-After: 1209600

{
  "error": { "code": "credits_exhausted", "message": "..." },
  "credits": { "limit": 15000, "remaining": 40, "required": 100, "plan": "growth",
               "overage_used": 30000, "overage_cap": 30000, "reset": "2026-10-01T00:00:00Z" },
  "actions": [
    { "type": "purchase_credits",   "url": "https://parsers.vc/api_page/pricing/" },
    { "type": "raise_overage_cap",  "contact": "[email protected]" },
    { "type": "reduce_page_size",   "parameter": "$top" },
    { "type": "wait",               "until": "2026-10-01T00:00:00Z" }
  ]
}

Whole datasets

Bulk dumps are not on self-service plans — write to [email protected] and we will unlock the datasets you need. They are priced at the same per-record weights, so a dump costs what paging through it would: the full startup set is about 913,000 credits, funds about 28,000, news about 2,448,000. Extracting the entire database comes to roughly 1.3 million credits for the core entities and around 11 million with the news and signal history. If that is what you are after, a licence is cheaper than the API and we would rather sell you one.

Questions

Why per record and not per request?

Because a request is not what costs us anything, and it is not what you came for. Charging per call means the same data is cheap or expensive depending on how you page it, which rewards writing an awkward client and penalises an honest one.

Do unused credits roll over?

The monthly allowance does not — it refills on the first of the month, UTC. Credits you buy on top of a plan sit in a separate balance and do not expire.

Can I see what a job will cost before running it?

Yes. GET /v2/pricing returns the weight of every endpoint, and $count tells you how many records match a filter for one credit. Multiply.

What about the website subscriptions?

Those are separate. Startups Pro and VC firms Pro unlock the site; these plans are for the API.

Full API reference  ·  Using the API through an assistant  ·  Instructions for the agent itself  ·  Your keys and usage