> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.gladeapi.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Glade API Units and Billing: How Usage Is Calculated

> Glade API charges one unit per successful operation. Errors, rate limits, and auth failures are never charged. Learn how units work and estimate costs.

Glade API uses a simple unit-based billing model — one successful operation consumes one unit, regardless of interface (REST, GraphQL, or MCP) or whether the data came from a live provider or cache.

***

## What counts as a unit

Every successful operation deducts exactly one unit from your balance, no matter how many fields you request or which interface you use:

* **One successful REST call** = 1 unit
* **One successful GraphQL operation** = 1 unit
* **One successful MCP tool invocation** = 1 unit
* **Cache hits** = 1 unit (you receive the same product value, freshness is preserved)
* **Internal retries and provider fan-out** = 0 additional units (Glade API absorbs these transparently)

<Note>
  You are never charged for errors. Validation errors, auth failures, rate limits, quota failures, provider errors, and timeouts all consume zero units.
</Note>

***

## Plans

Glade API offers four plans to fit every scale of usage. All plans include 100 free units to get started.

| Plan              | Price       | Units included | Requests/min | Concurrent | Interfaces           | Overage                   |
| ----------------- | ----------- | -------------- | ------------ | ---------- | -------------------- | ------------------------- |
| **Hobby**         | \$0         | 100            | 30           | 2          | REST only            | Hard cap (no overage)     |
| **Pay as you go** | \$0.01/unit | 100            | 120          | 10         | REST + GraphQL + MCP | \$0.01/unit               |
| **Premium 20K**   | \$99/month  | 20,000         | 600          | 50         | REST + GraphQL + MCP | \$0.01/unit               |
| **Enterprise**    | Custom      | 1,000,000      | 1,200        | 100        | REST + GraphQL + MCP | Hard cap option available |

For full plan details including annual pricing and volume discounts, visit [gladeapi.com/pricing](https://gladeapi.com/pricing).

***

## Estimating your usage

Your monthly unit consumption depends on the number of operations you run and the number of marketplaces you query.

**Example:** If you fetch product details for 1,000 ASINs daily across 2 marketplaces, that is 2,000 units per day or approximately 60,000 units per month.

A few reference points to help you plan:

* The **Premium 20K** plan covers approximately 666 products per day if you fetch each ASIN from a single marketplace (20,000 units ÷ 30 days).
* If you query the same ASIN across two marketplaces, that halves your daily ASIN budget to \~333 products per day on Premium 20K.
* For workloads that mix product lookups, search queries, and offer checks, count each operation individually — they each consume one unit.

Use the volume calculator at [gladeapi.com/pricing](https://gladeapi.com/pricing) to model your specific usage pattern before committing to a plan.

***

## Handling quota errors

When you exhaust your unit balance on a **Hobby** plan or any plan with a hard cap enabled, Glade API returns an HTTP `402` response. Your request is not fulfilled and no additional units are deducted.

```json theme={null}
{
  "success": false,
  "errors": [
    { "code": 402, "message": "Quota exceeded. Upgrade your plan or wait for your quota to reset." }
  ]
}
```

To resolve a quota error:

* **Hobby plan:** Upgrade to Pay as you go to unlock per-unit overage billing and eliminate the hard cap.
* **Pay as you go or Premium:** Overage billing kicks in automatically — you will not hit a hard cap unless you have manually enabled one in your dashboard.
* **Enterprise:** Contact your account manager to adjust your quota or enable a hard cap for cost control.