Existing PAYG accounts
Accounts already on PAYG keep paying $0.009 per credit until 28 September 2026, 16:00 UTC (29 September, 00:00 SGT). x402 has no accounts, so its price applies to everyone immediately.
Pricing
API Plans
| Free | Grow | Enterprise | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $0 | $870 | Custom |
| Annual (15% off) | $0 | $8,874 ($739.50/mo) | Custom |
| Credits / month | 1,000 | 120,000 | Custom |
| Overage | — | $0.00725 / credit | Custom |
| Rate limit | 60 RPM | 120 RPM | Custom |
| Agent Chat | — | ✓ | ✓ |
| Agent Automation | — | ✓ (up to 100 active plans) | ✓ |
Grow subscriptions started before October 2026 keep their existing price ($290/mo, or $2,958/yr billed annually), 40,000 credits per month, and $0.009 per overage credit.
What each tier unlocks
- Free — core social data: trending tokens, smart stats, top mentions, multi-keyword mentions search, event summaries, token news, and trending contract addresses (Twitter and Telegram)
- Grow — everything in Free, plus token mindshare, sentiment-weighted mentions, trending narratives, and Elfa Intelligence (Agent Chat and Agent Automation)
- Enterprise — everything in Grow, plus custom credit and rate limits, streaming AI Chat (Ask Elfa), dedicated support, custom integrations, and priority support
For Enterprise plans, custom rate limits, or volume pricing, contact [email protected].
Pay-Per-Use
| PAYG | x402 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0.0145 / credit | $0.0145 / credit |
| Billing | Prepaid credit balance, drawn down per call | Pay per request in USDC |
| Minimum top-up | $20 | — |
| Pay with | Card or USDC | USDC |
| Rate limit | 60 RPM | 1,000 RPM |
| Account | API key | No account needed |
Both cost the same per credit. PAYG uses traditional API key access with usage-based billing; x402 is pay-per-request in USDC on Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, or Solana with no account needed. Choose based on your integration style.
API v3
Free until 31 October 2026
API v3 is free on Pay-as-you-go and Grow until 31 October 2026. Requests take no credits and count toward no monthly limit; the per-minute rate limit still applies.
See API v3.
How Credits Work
Every API call consumes call credits. Subscription tiers include a fixed number of credits per month. On Grow, requests past that allowance keep working and are billed as overage at the end of the billing period; to stop at the allowance instead, turn overage off or set a spend cap in the dashboard. On Free, requests past the allowance are rejected until credits reset at the start of the next month. PAYG and x402 have no monthly allocation: you pay only for what you use.
For request-rate ceilings and retry guidance, see Rate Limits.
Know what a call cost
Every /v2/* response to an authenticated request carries an x-elfa-credits
header with the credits that request consumed — read it instead of diffing
/v2/key-status before and after a call. That
includes error responses raised after your key is accepted, which report whatever
the attempt cost. A request rejected before the key resolves — missing, invalid, or
unauthorized — carries no header at all, because nothing was charged.
Dynamically priced endpoints also report the same total in the body:
Builder Chat returns a credits field alongside its
reply, so an LLM turn that costs ~100 credits is never logged as 1.
Streaming responses and charges that finalize after the response is flushed carry the
pre-flush subtotal in the header — for those, /v2/key-status remains the
authoritative balance.
To make the most of your credits:
- Cache responses when possible to avoid repeated calls for the same data.
- Implement exponential backoff when receiving errors due to limits.
- Monitor your usage to avoid unexpectedly hitting limits.
- Batch requests where the API allows, rather than making many small requests.
Widget
Custom pricing. Contact the team.
Credits shown are part of the API plan; Elfa app plans consume credits differently. You can upgrade your plan at any time — new limits take effect immediately. For custom rate limits or enterprise plans, contact [email protected].