name: USAID API FinOps
description: >-
  USAID APIs are U.S. government open-data services with no direct cost to
  consumers. All APIs are funded through federal appropriations and offered
  freely to the public under open government data mandates. There are no
  usage-based billing, subscription fees, or overage charges associated with
  any USAID public API. Financial operations considerations for API consumers
  center on infrastructure costs of applications built on top of these APIs,
  not API access costs.
cost:
  model: Free - Government Open Data
  currency: USD
  baseCost: 0
  usageCost: 0
  overageCost: 0
considerations:
  - type: No Direct API Cost
    description: >-
      All USAID public APIs (ForeignAssistance.gov, Development Data Library,
      DEC API) are free to access. No payment method or billing account is
      required.
  - type: Application Token Registration
    description: >-
      Free registration for a Socrata application token is recommended for
      data.usaid.gov (DDL) to obtain higher rate limits. No cost is associated
      with token registration.
    url: https://dev.socrata.com/register
  - type: Bulk Data Downloads
    description: >-
      For high-volume use cases, USAID recommends downloading bulk data files
      (CSV, JSON) from foreignassistance.gov/data and data.usaid.gov rather
      than making repeated API calls, which reduces infrastructure costs for
      consumers.
  - type: Consumer Infrastructure Costs
    description: >-
      Organizations building products on USAID APIs should budget for their
      own compute, storage, and bandwidth costs for ingesting, processing, and
      serving USAID data, particularly for applications performing frequent
      dataset refreshes or serving large user bases.
  - type: Data Availability Risk
    description: >-
      Some USAID APIs (notably the DEC API and portions of the ecosystem)
      have experienced service disruptions since early 2025 due to agency
      restructuring. Consumers should account for potential data unavailability
      in system design and consider caching or bulk-download strategies.