Billing T&C questions

Hi,
Apologies if I missed a link somewhere but I can’t seem to find the T&C for the XML API. Besides I have a few specific questions so it might be easier to get them answered this way.

  1. Since your tiering works on a per month basis, I assume that the bill is only issued monthly - what constitutes a month, is that a calendar month (Jan/Feb/Mar…) or is it a month from the point I join the service (e.g. 17/04 - 16/05, next 17/05-16/06 etc.) ?
  2. Somewhere on the forum you mentioned that you don’t bill until you accrue $5. If every month I only made just a handful of queries, for a total of ~$2, would that charge me $6 in the third month (as in: it would accumulate all the calls), or does it “reset” every month? If the former (accumulation), say you charged $6 in third month and my usage remained on the same level. Would you then issue a bill for $2 in the fourth month, or wait again until the sixth month to issue another $6 bill? I’m asking because initially I expect very little activity on the account - I’m just playing around with a few ideas.
  3. For the “maxResults” feature. I understand that if I request more than 15 items in the call, then it doesn’t count as a single call, but multiple calls (i.e. if 43 results are returned, then that would require 3 calls of 15 items, so the charge will be for 3 calls not 1). Do I understand correctly though that it works also if less results are returned - e.g. I request max 150 but only 7 are returned, then charge will be for 1 call not 10 ?

Thanks a lot for clarifying these.

  1. I believe the billing is a monthly cycle starting from the day within the month that you originally signed up.

  2. The $5 threshold before billing is total accumulation, and is not per month. The threshold is intended to make it easier for new users, not for low-volume users.

  3. Correct, each multiple of 15 results actually returned (or portion thereof) will cause another change of that function call. The number requested does not impact billing, just the number actually found and returned, with the exception of 0 results still counting as 1 charge.