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Lightdrift is pay-as-you-go. Your credit balance pays for searches, while your plan determines how many requests you can make and how many searches can run at once. Check your current plan, limits, and progress toward the next plan in Plan and limits. Buy credit and view your balance in Credits.

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Plans at a glance

Plans are based on your cumulative credit purchases in USD. These are purchase thresholds, not monthly subscription prices. For custom limits, contact us. If your account or API key has custom limits, they can differ from the standard plans above.

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How upgrades work

1

Purchase search credit

Add credit in Credits. Each credit purchase contributes to your cumulative purchase total.
2

Reach a plan threshold

Your plan upgrades automatically when the total reaches 10,10, 100, or $1,000. You do not pay a separate upgrade fee.
3

Use the credit with higher limits

The purchased credit remains available to pay for searches. Using your balance does not reduce your cumulative purchase total or lower your plan.
Example: You have purchased 5andareonPromo.Purchaseanother5 and are on Promo. Purchase another 5 to reach 10intotalpurchasesandunlockStarter:60requestsperminute,5,000perday,and4concurrentsearches.Thatnew10 in total purchases and unlock Starter: 60 requests per minute, 5,000 per day, and 4 concurrent searches. That new 5 is added to your search balance.
Promotional credit and account adjustments do not count toward plan upgrades. Your available balance can therefore be different from the purchase total shown on your plan page.

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What each limit means

  • Requests per minute: how many authenticated requests you can make in a minute window.
  • Requests per day: how many authenticated requests you can make in a daily window.
  • Concurrent searches: how many searches can be in progress at the same time across your account. Once a search finishes, its slot becomes available again.
Minute and daily request limits use fixed windows. Requests count toward these limits even when rejected; repeatedly retrying will not bypass the limit. A request limit is not a billing charge: failed searches are not charged. With API keys, minute and daily counters are tracked per key. Images MCP connections authenticated through OAuth share a request counter for the account. Concurrent searches are counted across the account. Custom API-key limits may override the plan defaults.

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Search pricing and balance

A successful image search or similar-image search costs $0.02. Retrieving image details is free. Higher plans increase request capacity; the request allowances do not include free searches. You need both available credit and room within your limits to run a paid search. A high plan does not replace a credit balance. See Images MCP for tool pricing and the search guide for REST usage. Docs MCP reads public documentation and does not spend Lightdrift search credit.

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When a request is blocked

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Headers for API integrations

Use the response headers to pace REST requests. Headers available depend on the response; a concurrency rejection, for example, includes Retry-After and X-Concurrency-Limit. Your dashboard plan page shows the account’s plan defaults. API headers reflect the effective limits for a particular request, including custom key limits.