Billing & payments
Payments are handled end to end by Stripe. Blopus never sees, stores or transmits a card number.
The free trial#
Every new account starts on the trial plan. No card, no expiry date, and nothing to cancel — if you never subscribe, nothing ever happens.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| 400 credits | About 4,000 search results, since a credit buys a block of 10. Enough to build and test something real, not a demo. |
| One time, not monthly | The 400 do not reset on the 1st. When they are spent the trial
is over and calls return 402 until you choose a plan. |
| No time limit | There is no 14 or 30‑day clock. Take a month or take a year — the trial ends when the credits do, not when a timer does. |
| 3 API keys | Up to three active keys at once. Revoke one to create another. Paid plans start at 10 — see rate limits & credits. |
| Full API | Search, fetch and image search, over REST, the SDKs and the hosted MCP server. Nothing is feature‑gated, and results are not degraded. |
| No support | Support requests need a paid plan. The docs, the changelog and the community links are open to everyone. |
Subscribing does not waste what is left. You can move to any plan at any point in the trial, including part‑way through it, and you are never asked to pick a plan up front just to get started.
The rate limit is lower on the trial than on a paid plan, so a load test
will hit 429 sooner than production would. Honor
Retry-After, and treat throughput as something to measure after
you subscribe rather than during the trial.
How payment works#
Checkout happens on Stripe's own hosted page. Your card details are entered on Stripe's domain and never touch our servers — which is also why we cannot look up your card, change it for you, or read it back to you over support.
Everything after the first payment lives in the Stripe customer portal, reached from Subscription in your console. It opens in a new tab so you do not lose your session.
Invoices and receipts#
- Every payment produces an invoice, available in the customer portal as a PDF with your business details on it. Nothing needs to be requested from support.
- The invoice is the receipt. Download it from the portal whenever you need one for expenses or accounting — it does not have to be requested.
- The full history stays available — invoices do not expire out of the portal when a subscription changes or ends.
- You can update the billing address on your invoices from the portal. A company name or VAT/tax ID is not self-serve today — ask support, and say whether you need an existing invoice reissued or only future ones changed.
Payment methods#
Cards, and the wallets Stripe offers in your region at checkout. Update or replace the card on file from the customer portal at any time.
A failed renewal does not delete anything. Stripe retries on its own schedule and emails you. Your data, keys and account stay put — the API pauses rather than the account disappearing.
Upgrades and downgrades#
| Change | When it takes effect | What you pay |
|---|---|---|
| Upgrade | Immediately | Prorated — you are invoiced for the difference for the remainder of the current period, and the higher quota is available at once. |
| Downgrade | At the end of the current period | Nothing now. You keep what you already paid for until the period ends, then the lower plan starts. No refund of the difference, because you keep the service. |
| Cancel | At the end of the current period | Nothing further. The API keeps working until the last day you paid for. |
This asymmetry is deliberate: upgrading should be instant because you need the capacity now, and downgrading should not hand you a partial month you already used.
Annual to monthly is not a self-serve change. Switching direction mid-term strands the balance of an annual term as credit rather than money. Ask support and we will sort it out with you rather than let the portal do something surprising.
Cancelling#
Cancel yourself, from the customer portal — no email required, no retention call. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the period you have already paid for, so nothing stops working the moment you click it.
Cancelling leaves your account, keys and history in place. If you want the account itself removed, that is a separate action — see Account & security.
Credits and top-ups#
Your plan carries a monthly allowance, sold in blocks of 10 results — see Rate limits & credits.
- Top-ups are spent only after the monthly allowance is exhausted, oldest first. They are not a separate pool you have to choose between.
- Top-up credits do not expire while your subscription is active. They are not use-it-or-lose-it, and they do not reset with the month.
- Top-ups require an active subscription. They extend a plan; they are not a way to buy the API without one.
No overage, ever#
There is no usage-based billing and no overage charge. When you reach your cap, calls pause and return a clear error — they do not silently keep running at your expense. You are emailed as you approach it.
The failure mode of a runaway agent on Blopus is an outage, not an invoice.
Tax#
Prices are shown excluding tax. Where we are registered to collect it, tax is calculated by Stripe at checkout and added on top, and it appears as a separate line on your invoice. If your business has a tax ID, enter it in the portal — it is applied to future invoices and shown on them.
Refunds#
Subscriptions renew automatically and are not refundable; cancel before the next renewal to stop it. If something went genuinely wrong — you were charged twice, or billed after cancelling — that is not a refund question, it is a mistake, and support will fix it.