name: Rick and Morty API FinOps
description: Financial operations considerations for consuming the Rick and Morty API. The API is free with no direct cost to consumers. FinOps considerations relate to infrastructure costs incurred by the API maintainer and any costs consumers may incur running dependent workloads.
url: https://rickandmortyapi.com/support-us
cost_to_consumer:
  model: free
  price_per_request: 0.00
  currency: USD
  notes: >
    There is no cost to API consumers. The API is fully open and requires no
    paid subscription or API key.
cost_to_provider:
  infrastructure:
    - service: Netlify
      purpose: Hosting and CDN for the API website and documentation
    - service: Stellate
      purpose: GraphQL CDN and caching layer for performance
    - service: DigitalOcean
      purpose: Backend compute and data hosting
  funding_model: >
    The project is volunteer-maintained by Axel Fuhrmann and funded through
    community donations via Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee. There is no commercial
    revenue model.
  donation_url: https://rickandmortyapi.com/support-us
consumer_finops_notes: >
  Because the API is free with a 10,000 requests/day/IP rate limit, consumers
  building production applications should plan for:
  - Implementing local caching to reduce API call volume
  - Spreading load across multiple IP addresses if higher throughput is needed
  - Mirroring static data locally (826 characters, 126 locations, 51 episodes)
    since the dataset is finite and changes infrequently
  - No metering, billing, or usage-based cost tracking is required