Enrichment credit

How enrichment credits are charged

Credits turn API usage into a predictable ledger. Instead of negotiating per-field invoices, you buy a pool of credits and spend them as endpoints run.

RichAPI publishes fixed credit pricing. Bundle credits never expire. Sandbox accounts start with one hundred free credits and no card 1. Starter, Growth, and Scale bundles publish fixed credit counts on the pricing page, and credits never expire 1. An Enrichment Pass covers fifty thousand profile or company enrichments a month when billed yearly 1.

Endpoint rules decide when a credit leaves the pool. Profile enrichment and Company enrichment cost 1 credit per call and bill on any 2xx response, including an empty body 2. Email finder is documented at 5 credits per call in waterfall examples, with miss-free waterfall endpoints billing zero when no source returns data 3.

That split matters for waterfall enrichment. On a miss-free waterfall, batch cost is volume times hit rate times credits per hit 3. On a 2xx-billed enrichment call, cost is volume times credits per call even when the payload is thin 2.

Credits are not quality. Spending a credit on a stale title still ages under data decay. Pair credit spend with match rate and fill rate so finance sees net-new usable fields, not raw call counts.

Receipts should show billed false on free misses so audits match the invoice 3. Without that flag, ops will argue about empty rows forever.

Keep enrichment credits on a separate mental shelf from seat licenses. Credits scale with workload. Seats scale with headcount. Mixing them in one forecast hides the real driver.

Finance should see credits the way they see ad spend: a unit that converts to outcomes. Credits per net-new verified email is a better KPI than credits per API call. The second number rewards noisy retries. The first rewards disciplined lists.

Watch auto top-up settings. RichAPI notes optional auto top-up is off by default on its pricing story, which is the safe posture for a new pipeline 1. Turning it on without anomaly alerts is how a stuck loop empties a paid bundle overnight.

Document which endpoints are on the Enrichment Pass versus the general bundle. Mixing pass-covered profile calls with bundle-priced finder calls is fine, but the forecast must show both lines 1.

Separate experimental credits from production credits in the ledger. Pilot endpoints and MCP toys should draw from a labeled sandbox pool so a curious engineer cannot empty the production bundle meant for the quarterly import 1.

When you renegotiate, bring credits per verified outcome, not credits per logo. Vendors respond to measured waste. Your own receipts are the bargaining chip 3.

Publish a monthly credit narrative for leadership. Show starting balance, credits spent by endpoint, verified outcomes, and credits per outcome. Without that story, finance will only see a declining balance and assume waste even when the pipeline is healthy 1.

Keep a rollback plan for bad enrichments. If a provider ships stale titles into a bulk pass, you need a way to revert field values without replaying every credit. Snapshot before write whenever the cohort is large 2.

How to budget enrichment credits

Start from the job, not from the bundle. Count the rows you will actually act on this month. Multiply by the credits per billable outcome for the endpoint you will use 3.

For miss-free waterfalls, multiply by your measured hit rate instead of assuming every row bills 3. For 2xx-billed enrichment, assume every attempted row can bill 2.

Add a verification tax when emails are involved. Usable fill rate after verification is the number finance should fund.

Prefer never-expire bundles when volume is spiky. RichAPI states bundle credits never expire, which fits irregular campaign calendars better than monthly burns you cannot roll over 1.

Protect a sample budget. The first one hundred free credits exist so you can prove the path before you buy Starter or Growth 1. Spend them on the same frozen sample you will use in production.

Report credits per net-new verified field next to data enrichment outcomes. That is the only unit leadership can compare across providers.

Create a kill switch. If daily credit burn exceeds a threshold without a matching rise in verified fills, pause workers before the bundle is gone. Credits are only predictable when someone owns the anomaly response.

Train AEs not to click enrich on closed-lost rows. Interactive tools that spend the same one-credit profile call as bulk jobs will quietly drain the pool if seats are unbounded 2.

Example of budgeting credits for a 1,000-row email pass

Ops plans to find emails for a one-thousand-row conference list with Email finder at 5 credits per hit on a miss-free waterfall 3. A frozen sample returns a measured hit rate near sixty percent. Expected billed hits and credit spend follow volume times hit rate times credits per hit before verification 3.

They verify every hit. Invalid rows drop out of usable fill. Misses on waterfall verification paths cost zero credits 3. The final budget is credits for hits plus credits for verification on those hits, not list size times every list price.

Finance buys a Growth-sized bundle only after the sample lands inside the forecast. That is enrichment credit planning tied to measured hit rate, not to a vendor slide.

When the full job runs, actual hit rate lands near the sample. Finance compares expected finder credits plus verification credits to the receipt and signs off on the next event list under the same formula 3.

The scorecard from that run becomes the template for the next cohort, so arguments about coverage start from the same denominator every time.

Enrichment credit vs waterfall enrichment

An enrichment credit is the billing unit. Waterfall enrichment is a lookup pattern whose cost depends on how those credits are charged on each step.