specification: FinOps Framework
specificationVersion: '1.0'
schema: https://www.finops.org/framework/
provider: DBnomics
providerId: dbnomics
created: '2026-07-11'
modified: '2026-07-11'
reconciled: false
tags:
- Economic Indicators
- Macroeconomics
- Open Data
- Statistics
- FinOps
- Cost Management
- FOCUS
description: >-
  FinOps view of DBnomics spend - which is zero on the vendor side. DBnomics
  is a free, open-source digital public good operated by Cepremap and funded
  by public-institution sponsorship, with no invoices, tiers, or metered
  billing for API consumers. Any cost of consuming DBnomics is entirely on
  your side: the compute, storage, and egress of your own pipelines that call
  the API, and the infrastructure cost of a self-hosted deployment if you run
  the open-source stack yourself.
notes: >-
  There is no FOCUS-mappable invoice from DBnomics. The meters below describe
  internal cost drivers for consumers (own-infrastructure costs), not vendor
  charges. Organizations depending on DBnomics in production should consider
  sponsoring the project as a line item, since sustainability is
  community-funded.
sources:
- https://db.nomics.world/
- https://docs.db.nomics.world/
- https://git.nomics.world/dbnomics
- https://focus.finops.org/focus-specification/v1-3/
alignedWith:
  framework: FinOps Foundation Framework
  frameworkUrl: https://www.finops.org/framework/
  dataSpec: FOCUS
  dataSpecVersion: '1.3'
  dataSpecUrl: https://focus.finops.org/focus-specification/v1-3/
publisherName: Cepremap
serviceCategory: Analytics and Open Data
billingModel:
  pricingCategory: Free
  billingFrequency: None
  billingCurrency: USD
  chargeCategories: []
focusColumns:
  ServiceName: DBnomics Web API
  ServiceCategory: Analytics and Open Data
  ProviderName: DBnomics
  PublisherName: Cepremap
  InvoiceIssuerName: None (no invoicing; free public good)
  BillingCurrency: USD
  ChargeCategory: None
  PricingCategory: Free
meters:
- name: api_requests
  description: Requests your pipelines make to the public Web API; free on the DBnomics side, but drive your own compute and egress.
  unit: requests
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - pipeline
  - provider_code
- name: series_observations_pulled
  description: Volume of time-series observations retrieved (observations=true); drives your own storage and processing costs.
  unit: observations
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - pipeline
  - dataset
- name: self_hosted_compute
  description: Infrastructure cost of running a self-hosted DBnomics deployment (API plus per-provider fetchers); no vendor invoice.
  unit: hours
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - deployment
- name: sponsorship
  description: Optional voluntary sponsorship of the DBnomics public good, if your organization chooses to contribute.
  unit: currency
  aggregation: sum
  dimensions:
  - organization
principles:
- name: Visibility
  description: Track which internal pipelines and teams pull from DBnomics and how many series/observations they retrieve, since the cost lives in your infrastructure, not a vendor bill.
- name: Allocation
  description: Tag ingestion jobs per team or product so own-infrastructure costs of economic-data pulls map to cost centers.
- name: Optimization
  description: Cache series locally, poll /last-updates instead of re-pulling full datasets, request only needed dimensions, and use CSV/bulk downloads for large extractions.
- name: Accountability
  description: Assign an owner for the DBnomics dependency; if it becomes production-critical, budget a sponsorship contribution to sustain the upstream public good.
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com