Credits and Usage in The Hog

Credits are the unit of consumption in The Hog. They’re charged when an API call performs paid work to fulfil your request. Not every call costs credits — lightweight operations like health checks and polling run for free — but anything that fetches, enriches, scrapes, or researches data from external sources will draw from your credit balance.

What costs credits

Operation	Credit behaviour
`POST /api/v1/companies/search`	Charged based on the companies searched and enriched
`POST /api/enrichments`	Charged per enrichment lookup attempt
`POST /api/v1/platform/scrapers/*`	Charged per scrape request
`POST /api/deep-research`	Charged for LLM-powered deep research

What is free

Operation	Why it’s free
`GET /api/health`	Infrastructure probe — no external calls
`GET /api/operations/:id`	Polling — reads stored operation state only

Metered charges

Launch endpoints charge based on the work completed for your request. Responses expose customer-safe credit fields such as creditsCharged, estimates, and request metadata.

Credit metering in company search responses

Company search responses include a metering object so you know exactly what was charged:

{
  "data": [...],
  "metering": {
    "creditsCharged": 3,
    "estimatedMaxCredits": 5
  },
  "meta": {
    "requestId": "req_aabbccdd",
    "cost": { "estimated": 5, "actual": 3 }
  }
}

creditsCharged reflects what was actually deducted. estimatedMaxCredits is the ceiling that was reserved at the start of the call — you’re only charged the actual amount.

Insufficient credits — 402 error

If your account doesn’t have enough credits to cover an operation, the API returns a 402 Payment Required response before any external calls are made:

{
  "statusCode": 402,
  "error": "Payment Required",
  "message": "Insufficient credits: 8 required, 3 available",
  "path": "/api/enrichments",
  "requestId": "req_nofunds",
  "timestamp": "2026-05-06T10:00:00.000Z"
}

No credits are deducted when a 402 is returned. Reduce the request scope or add credits before retrying.

Get Started

Core Concepts

Guides

Reference

Credits and Usage in The Hog

What costs credits

What is free

Metered charges

Credit metering in company search responses

Insufficient credits — 402 error

​What costs credits

​What is free

​Metered charges

​Credit metering in company search responses

​Insufficient credits — 402 error

What costs credits

What is free

Metered charges

Credit metering in company search responses

Insufficient credits — 402 error