What happens when I run out of credits?

Requests answer 429 with the code QUOTA_EXCEEDED and a Retry-After header, until the period rolls over or until you upgrade. Nothing is charged that you did not ask for: a loop that runs away over a weekend costs you availability, never an invoice you find out about on Monday.

Can I keep serving traffic past the plan ceiling?

Not today, and saying so is more useful than a maybe. Overage is switched off on every plan because there is no metered price to bill it with: serving past the ceiling would hand out the product with no way to invoice it, and the symptom would not be an error, it would be a bill that never arrives. If your volume regularly reaches the ceiling, the next plan up is cheaper than any overage rate we would have set.

Do the trial credits come back next month?

No. The trial is 800 credits granted once, with a ceiling of 200 a day so a mistake in a loop cannot burn it in one minute. When they are gone the account answers 429 until a plan is chosen. It is deliberately not a small free tier: a tier that renews forever is a product given away, and this is a way to evaluate the API rather than to run on it.

What happens if I change plan mid-cycle?

Upgrades apply immediately and are prorated to the day, so you pay the difference only for the days left in the cycle. Downgrades are prorated the same way and the credit lands on the next invoice. New limits are live within a minute and your keys are not rotated.

How is EU VAT handled?

Prices are in euro and are net of tax. Checkout collects and validates your VAT number and your billing address, and both are printed on every invoice; the tax itself is applied according to where you are established. A business with a valid EU VAT number outside our country of establishment is invoiced under the reverse charge.

Is the yearly plan refundable?

Yearly plans are refunded in full within 30 days of the payment, without a support conversation about why. Monthly plans are not refunded mid-cycle: you cancel, and the plan stays active until the period you already paid for runs out.

What happens if I cancel?

You keep the paid plan until the end of the period you already paid for. After that the account stops answering data endpoints, but it is not closed and nothing is deleted: your keys stay valid, your invoices stay readable, and the billing endpoints keep answering so you can subscribe again with the same key and pick the limits straight back up. The trial credits do not come back — they were granted once, at signup.

pricing

The catalogue on every plan. The market from Growth up.

Every card, every set, every image and today’s price answer on every plan, trial included — the catalogue is never the thing you are buying back. What moves you up the list is market depth: graded quotes, the complete price series, the movers feed, and recognising a card from a photograph. The trial is the same API at the same speed with 800 credits to make up your mind, granted once.

2 months free on yearly

Trial

Freeone time

800 credits, no card.

requests / mo: 800
requests / s: 5
support: Community

Every catalogue endpoint, every image
Current prices, seven days of history
No credit card
Granted once, credits do not renew

Start the trial

Developer

29 €/mo

290 € billed yearly.

requests / mo: 50,000
requests / s: 30
support: Email

50,000 credits a month, no daily cap
Prices in every language we quote
30 days of price history
Five keys, one per environment

Choose Developer

Growth

recommended

79 €/mo

790 € billed yearly.

requests / mo: 200,000
requests / s: 80
support: Email, one business day

Card recognition from a photo
Graded quotes: PSA, BGS, CGC, SGC
Complete price history and the movers feed
Sixteen requests in flight, fifteen keys

Choose Growth

Professional

149 €/mo

1,490 € billed yearly.

requests / mo: 500,000
requests / s: 160
support: Email, same business day

Everything in Growth, at 500,000 credits
Twenty-four requests in flight
Forty keys
Answered the same business day

Choose Professional

Enterprise

Customannual contract

Priced on volume and terms.

requests / mo: Custom
requests / s: 400
support: Named contact

Credits by contract
Custom rate and concurrency limits
DPA and SCCs

Contact sales

Licence

Commercial use is allowed on every tier, including free. Attribution is required where the data is displayed, and the two exclusions — rebuilding a bulk dataset for redistribution and reselling raw price series — are written out in the terms rather than left to interpretation.

calculator

Work out the plan before you pick one.

Move the three sliders to your real traffic. The weights are the published ones, the month is 30 days, and the plan that lights up is the smallest one your volume fits inside.

your traffic

Catalogue requests / day500

500 × 1 × 30 days = 15,000 requests

Price history calls / day50

50 × 5 × 30 days = 7,500 requests

Photo recognitions / day10

10 × 25 × 30 days = 7,500 requests

A 30-day month, weights applied as published below. Images, reference data and 304 responses cost nothing, so they are not in this calculation.

weighted total

30,000requests / month

Developer50,000

Growth200,000

Professional500,000

About 30K weighted requests a month fits Growth at 79 €/mo, with 85% of the quota still unused. Go over it and requests answer 429 until the reset — nothing is charged unless you switched overage on yourself. Your credits would fit Developer, but photo recognition is included from Growth up — set the photo slider to zero to price the rest on its own.

weights

What counts as a request.

Most calls cost one credit. Prices cost two, movers three, history five, and recognising a card from a photo costs 25 — that one is not a row you read, it is the whole image index answering. Reference lists and your own account cost nothing, and so does a 304. With 800 trial credits that is 800 catalogue lookups, or 400 price reads.

How many requests each endpoint family costs.
counts as	endpoints	1,000 calls cost	in the 800-credit trial
0	Reference lists, price sources, status, your own quota and keys	0	Unlimited
1	Card, set and sealed-product lookups, search, artists, series, changes	1,000	800 calls
2	Current prices (cards and sealed) and price stats	2,000	400 calls
3	Movers	3,000	266 calls
5	Price history	5,000	160 calls
25	Card recognition from a photo	25,000	From Growth

The cost is per request and never per row: a page of 250 cards costs exactly what a single card costs, so paging properly is rewarded instead of punished. Every response carries its own cost in X-Credits-Cost, and a 304 costs nothing.

included

On every plan, including the trial.

These are not upsells and they never appear in the comparison below, because they do not change: the catalogue is whole from the first request you make.

The whole catalogue
Every card, set, series and artist — Japanese, international and Simplified Chinese — plus sealed products. Nothing is held back by tier.
Names in six languages
English, Italian, Spanish, French, German and Japanese, asked for with one header and falling back on their own.
Images
Every printing, in several sizes, from our own host with long cache lifetimes and no hotlink surprises.
Search that means it
Field filters, ranges and sorting on the fields you would actually sort on, with cursor pagination that never drops or repeats a row.
A changes feed
Ask what moved since a cursor instead of walking the catalogue again — how you keep a mirror in step without paying for a full crawl.
ETags and quota headers
A 304 costs nothing, every response carries its own cost, and what is left of the quota is a header rather than a support ticket.
OpenAPI, SDK and MCP
A generated OpenAPI 3.1 document, a zero-dependency TypeScript SDK, and an MCP server so an agent can query the catalogue directly.
Commercial use
Allowed on every tier, trial included, with attribution where the data is displayed.

plans

And here is what actually changes.

Only the rows that differ, grouped by what you are buying. They are the numbers the API applies: https://api.pokemontcgapi.com/v1/billing/plans returns this table as JSON, and if the two ever disagree the JSON is right.

The contract

What it costs, what it grants, and whether the grant comes back next month.

The contract: how the plans differ.
Feature	Trial	Developer	Growth	Professional	Enterprise
Per month	Free	29 €	79 €	149 €	Custom
Per year	Free	290 €	790 €	1,490 €	Custom
Credits	800 once	50,000 / mo	200,000 / mo	500,000 / mo	By contract
Credits renewThe trial is granted once, at signup.	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	By contract
Daily cap	200	None	None	None	None
Support	Community	Email	Email, one business day	Email, same business day	Named contact

Market data

This is where the ladder actually is. Below Growth you read the catalogue and today’s price; from Growth up you read the market.

Market data: how the plans differ.
Feature	Trial	Developer	Growth	Professional	Enterprise
Current pricesEvery source we carry, on every plan.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Price history	7 days	30 days	Complete	Complete	Complete
Prices in every languageBelow this line only the English quotes come back.	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Graded quotesPSA, BGS, CGC and SGC, by company and score.	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Movers feedWhat moved since yesterday, ranked.	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Card recognitionA photo in, the card out. 25 credits a call.	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes

Throughput

The monthly ceiling is not what breaks first. The peak is.

Throughput: how the plans differ.
Feature	Trial	Developer	Growth	Professional	Enterprise
Requests / second	5	30	80	160	400
Requests / minute	300	1,800	4,800	9,600	24,000
Requests in flightThe number that decides whether a bulk job finishes tonight.	3	8	16	24	32

Operations

What you need to put it in production without asking anyone for anything.

Operations: how the plans differ.
Feature	Trial	Developer	Growth	Professional	Enterprise
API keysOne per environment, rotated with a grace window.	1	5	15	40	100
Commercial useIncluding on the trial.	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

billing

The questions that come before the card details.

What happens when I run out of credits?: Requests answer 429 with the code QUOTA_EXCEEDED and a Retry-After header, until the period rolls over or until you upgrade. Nothing is charged that you did not ask for: a loop that runs away over a weekend costs you availability, never an invoice you find out about on Monday.
Can I keep serving traffic past the plan ceiling?: Not today, and saying so is more useful than a maybe. Overage is switched off on every plan because there is no metered price to bill it with: serving past the ceiling would hand out the product with no way to invoice it, and the symptom would not be an error, it would be a bill that never arrives. If your volume regularly reaches the ceiling, the next plan up is cheaper than any overage rate we would have set.
Do the trial credits come back next month?: No. The trial is 800 credits granted once, with a ceiling of 200 a day so a mistake in a loop cannot burn it in one minute. When they are gone the account answers 429 until a plan is chosen. It is deliberately not a small free tier: a tier that renews forever is a product given away, and this is a way to evaluate the API rather than to run on it.
What happens if I change plan mid-cycle?: Upgrades apply immediately and are prorated to the day, so you pay the difference only for the days left in the cycle. Downgrades are prorated the same way and the credit lands on the next invoice. New limits are live within a minute and your keys are not rotated.
How is EU VAT handled?: Prices are in euro and are net of tax. Checkout collects and validates your VAT number and your billing address, and both are printed on every invoice; the tax itself is applied according to where you are established. A business with a valid EU VAT number outside our country of establishment is invoiced under the reverse charge.
Is the yearly plan refundable?: Yearly plans are refunded in full within 30 days of the payment, without a support conversation about why. Monthly plans are not refunded mid-cycle: you cancel, and the plan stays active until the period you already paid for runs out.
What happens if I cancel?: You keep the paid plan until the end of the period you already paid for. After that the account stops answering data endpoints, but it is not closed and nothing is deleted: your keys stay valid, your invoices stay readable, and the billing endpoints keep answering so you can subscribe again with the same key and pick the limits straight back up. The trial credits do not come back — they were granted once, at signup.