Authentication
Authentication is easy: just put &apikey=XXX in the URL of your request. To get your API key, sign up, first. Then from your Infochimps account page, you will find your API Key.
Please do not share your API Key with others.
Your API Key is the key, if you will, to access the Infochimps API. Treat it as a secret, since anyone with your key can access APIs on your behalf. All authorization and billing will be associated with your key, so it's in your interest to avoid unauthorized use, especially in the case someone uses a paid, Premium API.
API Pricing
When you sign up for an account with Infochimps, you are automatically enrolled for a free API subscription. We have done away with our subscription pricing model, so access to our free APIs will be just that - free. We do offer Premium Data APIs, which contain a cost of their own when used.
Premium API Pricing
Most data you access through the Infochimps API is free, however select APIs offer Premium data from a supplier that carry additional costs related to the use of the data. All of our Premium APIs are marked by the box in the upper right corner of the APIs' page. Many of these APIs include an amount of API calls you are able to make for free, before being charged.
Premium APIs require that you have a Brass Monkey account or higher with us in order to access them beyond the free tier.
Some example Premium APIs and their prices include:
| API | Pricing | Free Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Element IP-Geolocation | $3.35/1,000 successful lookup | 5,000 calls free /mo |
| Social Identity Mapping API | $10/1,000 successful lookup | 1,000 calls free /mo |
Billing
Subscriptions are prepaid, whereas Premium API billing is pay-per-use and billed after the fact. Much like minutes on your cellphone bill, or billing for EC2 use on Amazon Web Services, we tally your total calls to Premium APIs at the end of each month and notify you of the charges. After the notification we will bill your credit card on file within a few days.
Account Dashboard
Your account with Infochimps includes a dashboard with which you can monitor your usage. This is useful for monitoring use of paid APIs so you can know how much. You can access your dashboard from your API Account Page by clicking the View API Usage Charts button.
