Credits

A credit is a unit of data delivered, not a unit of time or of requests. The rule for the one variable endpoint is:

cost = max(1, rows_returned)

Every other billable route is a flat 1. Everything else is 0. There is no ratio and no division: the number of credits a request costs is the number of lines in the body you got back. Three consequences worth holding on to:

• You are billed for what arrived, not for what you asked for. A query matching 40 rows costs 40 credits whether you scoped it tightly or got lucky, and a query that matches nothing costs the floor of 1.
• Errors are free. Credits are debited after a successful response exists and its row count is known. A 4xx or 5xx costs nothing — including too_many_rows, which is decided by a count before any data is read.
• How you slice it does not change the bill. Nothing rounds, so one request of 1,200 rows and twelve of 100 cost the same 1,200 credits. Chunk for the row cap and for your own retry story, not for the price.

New accounts receive 2,000 credits — 2,000 rows — at email verification, not at signup. After that you top up by amount, whenever you like; nothing renews and no card is stored.

Flat, and only flat. Credits cost the same whether you buy a hundred rupees’ worth or a hundred thousand: no tiers, no volume discount, and nothing to compare on a pricing table. You type an amount, that amount is charged, and it buys the credits below.

Purchases are whole multiples of the step — ₹100 or $1 — and the step is also the minimum. The ceiling is a fat-finger guard rather than a policy: if you genuinely mean to spend more than that in one go, get in touch and we will sort it out. Amounts and balances are integers end to end, so what you are charged, what lands on the balance and what the invoice says are the same three numbers.

Buying is on your billing page; the pricing page carries the same figures for anyone without an account yet. Credits do not expire, nothing auto-renews, and no card is stored — every purchase is a one-off you start yourself.

You never have to guess. Two free moves tell you the size of a pull in advance.

"coverage": { "n_countries": 213, "yr_min": 2000, "yr_max": 2024, "latest_year": 2024 }

213 countries × 25 years = 5,325 rows  →  5,325 credits  →  ₹5.33

# Size the job before committing to it: ask for one country, read meta.count,
# multiply. The probe itself costs one credit per row it returns.
curl -sS "https://api.worldgovdata.com/v1/data?indicator=wdi.gdp_per_capita_ppp&countries=IND" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $WGD_API_KEY" | jq '.meta.count'

Every metered response tells you what it cost and what is left. There is no reason to poll a balance endpoint on a schedule — the answer is already attached to the work you are doing.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Cache-Control: private, no-store
X-Request-Id: 0f3a91c4e2b7
X-RateLimit-Limit: 600
X-RateLimit-Remaining: 594
X-RateLimit-Reset: 1785315600
X-Credits-Charged: 125
X-Credits-Remaining: 97558

• Both headers are absent on a request that was never metered — an anonymous call to a free route, for instance.
• X-Credits-Charged: 0 on a 4xx or 5xx is a promise, not a rounding: failed requests genuinely cost nothing.
• Log X-Credits-Remaining from your batch jobs and alert on it falling below a day of headroom. It is the cheapest budget monitor available and it is free.

We never serve on credit. If your balance is below what a request needs, it is refused before the query runs — so an over-budget request costs nothing and leaves nothing half-done.

HTTP/1.1 402 Payment Required

{
  "error": {
    "code": "insufficient_credits",
    "message": "This request needs 1 credit and your balance is 0.",
    "required": 1,
    "balance": 0,
    "top_up_url": "https://worldgovdata.com/account/billing"
  }
}

The body is deliberately actionable. required is what this request needed, balance is what you hold, and top_up_url is where to fix it. A client that gets a bare 402 can only guess whether it is one credit short or a hundred thousand.

• Not a licence. Credits buy delivery, not rights. An indicator whose licence forbids redistribution returns 403 display_only at any balance. See Licensing.
• Not a rate limit. The two ceilings are independent: a full balance does not raise your requests-per-minute, and hitting a 429 does not cost you anything. See Rate limits.
• Not perishable. Credits do not expire, do not reset monthly and are not use-it-or-lose-it.
• Not charged to the portal. Browsing worldgovdata.com in a browser never touches your balance. Only calls you make with your own key do.