Pricing that scales with your project.

Every plan can query any geography level directly — nation, state, county, metro, congressional district, census tract, and block group. The difference between tiers is what you can do at scale: wildcard queries, GeoJSON boundary access, inline geometry in data responses, CSV export, and MCP access. Free includes nation and state boundaries. Pioneer adds county, metro, congressional district boundaries plus MCP server access. Pro adds wildcard geography queries, tract boundaries, inline GeoJSON, and CSV export. Business ($299/mo) adds block group boundaries. Enterprise adds custom boundary delivery and procurement/security support.

Yes. You can upgrade or downgrade your plan at any time from your account dashboard. Upgrades take effect immediately — you get access to the higher quota and rate limit right away, and your billing is prorated for the remainder of the current billing period. Downgrades take effect at the start of your next billing cycle, so you keep your current limits through the end of the month you've already paid for.

Each API call to a data endpoint (/v1/data, /v1/compare, /v1/timeseries) counts against your monthly quota. Simple queries cost 1 unit. Requests with more than 10 variables or 10 geographies cost additional units — the formula is: 1 + ceil((variables - 10) / 10) + ceil((geographies - 10) / 10) when either exceeds 10. A query for 5 variables across 3 counties costs 1 unit. A wildcard query pulling 254 Texas counties costs ~26 units. Some endpoints are free and never count against your quota: /v1/variables, /v1/geographies, /v1/topics, and the codebook downloads.

Pioneer ($19/mo) adds MCP server access plus county, metro, and congressional district boundary access. Pro ($49/mo) adds wildcard geography queries, tract boundaries, inline GeoJSON boundaries in data responses (include_geometry=true), CSV export, and 5,000 geographies per wildcard query. If your use case involves sub-county analytics, mapping, or composite indices like SVI and ADI, Pro is the tier you need.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets AI models and LLM agents query Census data natively — no custom API integration required. Your AI agent gets 8 tools: get_census_data, compare_geographies, get_timeseries, search_variables, search_geographies, list_topics, list_datasets, and geocode. Available on Pioneer and above.

Yes. Every variable has a human-readable name (like pop_total) and also accepts the original Census Bureau code (like B01003_001E) as an alias. The variable catalog endpoint lets you search by either format.

Yes. Boundary access follows your tier — Free gets nation and state boundaries, Pioneer adds county, metro, and congressional district boundaries, Pro adds tract boundaries at two resolutions plus inline boundaries in data responses (include_geometry=true). Business adds block group boundaries. Enterprise adds 500k cartographic boundary resolution where available plus custom boundary delivery options.

No. Quotas reset on the first of each calendar month (UTC midnight). Unused requests from the previous month don't carry forward. This keeps our infrastructure planning predictable and our pricing simple. If you consistently hit your limit well before month-end, that's a good signal to upgrade.

Yes. The Free tier is not a trial — it's a permanent tier with a real (if modest) monthly quota. We don't put a countdown clock on it, we don't nag you to upgrade, and we don't expire accounts that stay on Free. 1,000 requests per month is enough to prototype, build side projects, and run small-scale analyses. When your usage needs grow beyond that, upgrading is straightforward.

Once you've used your monthly quota, the API starts returning 429 Too Many Requests responses until the quota resets at the start of the next month. Your requests are rejected cleanly — there are no surprise overage charges. We don't automatically charge you extra or bump you to a higher tier without your consent. Your dashboard will show real-time usage so you can see limits approaching before you hit them.

We haven't formalized a non-profit or academic pricing program yet. That said, we recognize that universities, research institutions, and civic tech organizations are exactly the kind of users this API was built for. If you're working on academic research or a public-interest project and the standard pricing doesn't fit your budget, reach out via the Enterprise contact form and describe your work. We'll see what we can do.