name: TimezoneDB FinOps
description: Financial operations guidance for managing TimezoneDB API costs.
url: https://timezonedb.com/premium

cost_model:
  type: subscription
  description: TimezoneDB uses a flat-rate subscription model with a free tier and premium tiers. There is no per-request pricing — all costs are fixed monthly or annual subscriptions.

tiers:

  - name: Free
    monthly_cost: 0.00
    annual_cost: 0.00
    currency: USD
    best_for: Personal projects, prototyping, low-volume non-commercial applications
    constraints:
      - 1 request per second maximum
      - Non-commercial use only
      - No IP-based lookup

  - name: Premium Monthly
    monthly_cost: 5.00
    annual_cost: 60.00
    currency: USD
    best_for: Commercial applications, production workloads, high-frequency lookups
    constraints: []

  - name: Premium Annual
    monthly_cost: 4.17
    annual_cost: 50.00
    currency: USD
    best_for: Established commercial applications seeking cost savings over monthly billing
    constraints: []

cost_optimization:
  - strategy: Cache responses
    description: Cache timezone lookup results locally since timezone data changes infrequently. This reduces API calls and keeps usage within free tier limits for most applications.
  - strategy: Use annual subscription
    description: Annual plan saves $10/year (approximately 17% savings) compared to monthly billing for commercial users.
  - strategy: Batch lookups
    description: On the free tier, pace requests to stay within the 1 request/second limit to avoid blocked calls.
  - strategy: Evaluate free tier first
    description: The free tier provides full API functionality for non-commercial use. Start free and upgrade only when rate limits become a constraint.

payment:
  methods:
    - Credit card
  billing_cycles:
    - Monthly
    - Annual