What happens when you run out of scraping API credits?

Three things can happen at the end of an allowance

A plan’s credits cover a set amount of work each month. Once they are spent, the vendor does one of three things. It bills each extra request at a published overage rate, the way a phone contract bills extra data. It sells top-up packs you buy, or that buy themselves, when the balance runs low. Or it stops answering until the next billing day, an upgrade or a manual top-up. The first two keep a crawl running and put an unplanned line on the invoice; the third keeps the invoice flat and stops the crawl.

Why overage often costs more than the plan

Most published overage rates are above the plan’s own price per credit, so running over every month is the expensive way to buy volume. Once you go past the allowance in two months running, compare the overage you paid with the next plan up: the bigger plan usually costs less per credit and leaves room to grow. A few vendors price overage at or below the plan rate, which makes a smaller plan with overage a reasonable way to cover an uneven month. The overage rate entry sets each published rate beside its plan’s price.

When the rule is not published

“Not published” in the table means the vendor’s pricing and documentation pages do not say what happens; it does not mean requests stop. Ask the vendor before a launch or a large backfill, or pick a plan with enough headroom that the question does not come up. Each vendor page on this site shows how far its plans stretch for your volume, and the calculator shows the room every plan leaves for your job.