Pricing Seems Excessive

[doug.b...@gmail.com]

Hi

Maybe I don't understand the behind-the-scenes work to well but I'm a little scared to use this API since it has no declared free tier (charitable cause is very vague). Also if you're developing an app you can easily use up 50,000 calls in a year through simple testing and experimenting.

Compared to many other similar APIs it's a definite turn off. I no longer want to ressurect my Chrome extension. I was going to build a MeteorJS app using it but decided against it because there's no way I could afford evben the £500 fee nevermind the higher fees.

Also many people using APIs like this like to add Adsense or advertising to the site to help with hosting costs. But if that negates the charitable clause then you could easily kill off a pet project simply because it makes pence on the side.

I think for anyone wishing for similar but less draconian pricing should look to the Police UK API (100% free) and the other data sources at data.gov.uk

It's a shame your prices have suddenly become so ott when compared to other API's and services out there.

Regards.

Doug

[Doug Bromley]

In additiuon The Guardian newspaper provide a much more liberal API service: http://www.theguardian.com/open-platform/politics-api/getting-started

[Matthew Somerville]

Hi Doug,

The Guardian's API doesn't actually exist any more, if you try any of
the links from the page you quote. So that's one thing, in that we can
manage to maintain and keep things running for approximately twice as
long as a national newspaper ;-)

As I understand it, the conditions are the result of being a project
of a registered charity; we can only freely support other charitable
projects, and must charge for anything more. We define charitable
usage on the API page as "direct use by registered charities, or
individuals pursuing a non-profit project on an unpaid basis, with a
volume of up to 50,000 calls per year." – if the advertising you
mention is to cover hosting costs, as you say, then that seems to me
to be a non-profit project. The volume limit is because we do have
costs associated with maintaining and supporting the service (Hansard
still requires frequent manual fixing to process, for example). The
police/government might have slightly more budget than us :-) But if
their APIs meet your requirements, great.

ATB,
Matthew, mySociety

[do...@oldfashionedtoyshop.co.uk]

It seems the UK Parliament have released a free to use API now: http://www.data.parliament.uk/

Maybe this will help you in your Hansard endeavours?

[Miles Reid]

Hi everyone:

I'm not sure whether the pricing level is excessiveor not, but is there a different pricing tier for website developers for use whilst testing a specified site? My client is happy to pay for API calls when the site goes into production, but the number of calls whilst testing is already accumulating significantly, and will be very expensive.

Thanks

Miles

On Tuesday, 1 September 2015 02:19:58 UTC+1, Doug Bromley wrote:

[Matthew Somerville]

Hi,

I see you are already on the low tier as a charitable user (you don't
say who your client is). I'm sorry we don't offer testing pricing, but
1,000 calls should be adequate to perform site testing, assuming you
are using the live API to make a test call and then mocking that call
in your future testing. Once you've made a request for e.g. a
postcode, you don't need to re-request it hundreds of times to get
exactly the same result, using up your quota - mock it or cache it at
your end, and then perform as much testing as you want without any API
calls at all. Hope that makes sense.

ATB,
Matthew