Free credits without a price jump: how we pass on credits a provider gives us
Datacircle is a data co-op. Query your favorite B2B data APIs through us. Same request, same price, no markup. Our price is what the data cost us, at the package we bought. Some providers give us free credits. Up2Data gave us 10,771. We bought 10,000 more for $25 on 2026-10-10.
We could pass the free credits on to you for nothing. Then you'd see a price that drops to nothing and jumps back up the day the credits run out. We pass them on without the jump. This post starts a series on running a data co-op on other companies' APIs.
Three ways to price free credits
On 2026-10-10, the day of the grant, we held 20,771 Up2Data credits: 10,000 we bought for $25 at $2.50 per 1,000, and 10,771 Up2Data gave us. Up2Data takes one credit for each profile it finds.
| Our price per 1,000 profiles found | Once members have had the free credits' worth | |
|---|---|---|
| Pass them on for nothing | nothing, for the first 10,771 profiles | $2.50: from nothing to the full price overnight |
| Average them with what we bought | $1.20: $25 over 20,771 credits | $2.50 at our next purchase, up 108% |
| Ours: at most 5% off our price | $2.375, 5% off $2.50 | $2.45, then $2.50: up 3%, then 2% |
With the first two, we give members the credits' whole value at once. We would charge a low price until the free credits run out, then twice that or more, for the same profiles. A member who set a budget at the low price gets a bill twice as big. We spread the free credits' value over many more profiles: we charge at most 5% under what we last paid.
Keeping free credits would be a markup
We could sell every credit at $2.50 per 1,000, the price of the package we bought. Members would pay $26.93 for the 10,771 credits Up2Data gave us: money we never paid. Our price is what the data cost us, so we lower our price with every credit a provider gives us.
Computing the step off our price
We compute our price with code, from each purchase's receipt and each free grant, never by hand. For each provider, we owe members what they paid, plus what the credits we hold would sell for at our last purchase's price, minus what we paid.
For Up2Data today, we owe members $27.02, about what its 10,771 free credits are worth at $2.50 per 1,000.
We give that back as a step off our last purchase's price: what we owe as a share of our credits' value, in whole percents, at most 5%. $27.02 is 52% of $51.86, what our credits are worth today, so the step is 5%, our cap: $2.375 per 1,000 instead of $2.50. At that price, members get back $0.125 per 1,000 profiles found. We tell members in advance when the step changes: $2.375 per 1,000 for the next 210,743 profiles found, then $2.45, a 2% step, until we've given back the rest. Then $2.50 again, unless we buy at another price.
A step under 1% waits until it reaches 1%. Until then, the price stays at our last purchase's. With Fetchin's 1,000 free credits, the step is 1% today: $1.485 per 1,000 instead of $1.50, for the next 50,982 lookups, then $1.50.
Your bill
We announce each price step before it starts, in our docs' How we price, with its price and profile count. You see today's price, when it ends and the price after it. Each time we buy a bigger package, we pay less per profile, and we lower every member's price to match. In how our pricing works, we explain why our price can be above a provider's own and list the packages we bought. Each provider's price today is on our pricing page.
Questions
What happens to free credits a provider gives you?
Their value comes back to members as a step of at most 5% off our price, until it's all given back. Each step is announced ahead in our docs.
Do you pass free credits on for nothing?
No. If we passed on Up2Data's 10,771 free credits for nothing, you would pay nothing one day and $2.50 per 1,000 profiles found the next. We give you their value instead as a step of at most 5% off our price, over many more profiles, and we announce each step before it starts.
Do you keep the free credits?
No. Keeping them would be a markup. If we sold Up2Data's 10,771 free credits at $2.50 per 1,000, the price of the package we bought, we would take in $26.93 we never paid. Our price is what the data cost us, so when a provider gives us a credit, we lower our price.
Why is your price above the provider's own price?
Our price is what the data cost us, at the package we bought. Bought directly, a bigger package costs less per profile. When we buy one, our price drops with it.
How much does a LinkedIn profile cost?
$2.375 per 1,000 through Up2Data (a profile it can't find is free), $3.70 per 1,000 through HarvestAPI. $1.485 per 1,000 through Fetchin, a profile it can't find billed the same. HarvestAPI bills a profile it can't find at $2.30 per 1,000.
Get started
Sign up at datacircle.dev with your work email: a $5 credit, that's 2,105 LinkedIn profiles at $2.375 per 1,000.
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