Credits and limits

Credits

You pay for tracking with prepaid credits. 5,000 credits cost $1. You buy credits on the Billing page of the console. Each read of a tracked media uses credits. A read that fails uses no credits. API requests use no credits.

Read cadence	Credits per read	Credits per day
Every hour	8	192
Every 2 hours	9	108
Every 3 hours	10	80
Every 4 hours	11	66
Every 6 hours	12	48
Every 8 hours	13	39
Every 12 hours	14	28

A faster cadence uses fewer credits per read and more credits per day. Instagram, X and YouTube reads cost the same.

Read cadence

Set cadence_hours when you create tracked media. If you do not set it, the tracked media uses the project’s default cadence. New projects read every 12 hours. You can change a project’s default in the console Settings. The change applies to new tracked media only. To change the cadence of one tracked media, send cadence_hours in PATCH /instagram/submissions/{submission_id}. The new cadence starts from the last read.

Start and end dates

Send start_at to start tracking later. The first read is at that time. Send end_at to stop tracking at a date. At that time the tracked media becomes stopped, and it uses no more credits. To track it again, set a later end_at and resume it.

Geo

Geo collects audience data: countries, ages and gender. It is available for Instagram and YouTube. Send geo: true on a create or a PATCH.

On Instagram, it is the audience of the connected account.
On YouTube, it is the audience of the tracked media itself. We read it once a day.

Geo costs:

4 more credits on each read of the tracked media. We charge it only while the latest audience read returned data: the account’s on Instagram, the tracked media’s on YouTube.
On Instagram only, 1,500 credits per day for each account that has at least one active geo tracked media. We charge it only on a day when the audience read returns data. YouTube has no daily account cost.

You can turn geo off with geo: false until the first read of the tracked media. After the first read, you cannot turn geo off. demographics in GET /instagram/submissions and GET /youtube/submissions is present only on geo tracked media.

Estimate

POST /{platform}/submissions returns an estimate for one tracked media with the settings you sent:

{
  "estimate": {
    "credits_per_read": 15,
    "reads_per_day": 6,
    "credits_per_day": 90,
    "geo_account_credits_per_day": 1500
  }
}

credits_per_day does not include the daily geo account cost. geo_account_credits_per_day is always 0 on YouTube.

When the credits run out

When the balance reaches zero, tracking pauses for the whole workspace. Creates and resumes return 402 insufficient_credits:

{
  "error": {
    "code": "insufficient_credits",
    "message": "This workspace has no credits left. Buy credits on the Billing page to resume tracking.",
    "request_id": "req_01K5A7P8VM2T6R4W9C3H",
    "balance": 0,
    "required": 1
  }
}

balance is the current balance. required is the number of credits to add before tracking can start again. When you buy credits, tracking starts again on the next read slot. Your data, tracked media and pauses do not change. All GET requests continue to work while tracking is paused. To keep tracking without a stop, turn on auto top-up on the Billing page. It buys a credit pack when the balance falls below the amount you choose.

Check your balance

GET /v1/credits returns the balance, whether tracking is paused, the credits that expire in the next 14 days, and the auto top-up settings. GET /v1/credits/usage returns the credits used on each UTC day, per project and type. Set from and to as YYYY-MM-DD. The default is the last 30 days. A range can be at most 92 days.

`resource_type`	What used the credits
`media`	Reads of tracked media
`geo_read`	The geo cost added to each read, while there is audience data
`account`	The daily geo account cost. `project_id` is null.

These requests use no credits. You can only read credits with an API key. You buy credits and change auto top-up on the Billing page of the console.

Expiry

Credits expire 6 months after you buy them. We use the credits that expire first before other credits. We send an email 14 days and 3 days before credits expire.

Rate limits

Instagram limits reads for each connected account. URL discovery and scheduled reads share that limit. Send create items in batches. When the account is limited, ClipStake delays reads. A delayed read does not count as a failure and uses no credits. On X, POST /x/submissions can return 429 rate_limited when we check too many URLs at once. Wait a few minutes, then send the request again. On YouTube, POST /youtube/submissions can return 429 rate_limited when we cannot check YouTube URLs for a while. Wait for the time in Retry-After, then send the request again. Scheduled reads that YouTube limits are delayed, and a delayed read does not count as a failure.

Getting Started

API Reference

Developer Guides

Credits

Read cadence

Start and end dates

Geo

Estimate

When the credits run out

Check your balance

Expiry

Rate limits

​Credits

​Read cadence

​Start and end dates

​Geo

​Estimate

​When the credits run out

​Check your balance

​Expiry

​Rate limits

Credits

Read cadence

Start and end dates

Geo

Estimate

When the credits run out

Check your balance

Expiry

Rate limits