The shift from pricing on API calls to pricing on locations feels like the strongest insight here.
Curious whether customers understood the location-based pricing immediately, or whether changing the unit made the value clearer but the pricing harder to compare with competing APIs.
Pricing by location instead of API calls makes complete sense, especially for local data. I'm building LocalPatron (Google Business API management for local Business), and local owners think strictly in terms of 'locations/venues'—never API usage. Making them calculate API calls creates friction fast.
Did switching to location-based pricing reduce sales friction right away for you, or did developers still ask for pure usage tiers?
We kept usage-based pricing for developers in the Startup and Standard tiers, since that's still the right unit for anyone building an app or a dashboard. What's new is a Renewables plan for solar and wind forecasting, priced per location, plus some variables specific to that kind of forecast. People had been asking for it for a while and it just makes sense for that use case.
Haven't analysed the data yet, giving it some time. But no complaints so far and subscriptions are coming in.
Sounds like your case is cleaner than ours. A local business owner has one obvious unit and no reason to ever think in API calls. Are you letting them add locations self-serve, or does it turn into a sales conversation?
100% self-serve onboarding. Restaurant owners don't have time for sales calls or complex setups—they just log in, connect their Google profile, and select their location.
From there, the platform prepares everything automatically, but keeps a human-in-the-loop validation step so owners stay in full control before anything goes live on their profile.
Congrats on the early subscriptions rolling in for the Renewables plan! That's a strong validation signal.
Smart hybrid approach—capping self-serve at 20 locations keeps onboarding clean while capturing enterprise upsells.
Appreciate it! Best of luck with the scaling phase as well.
About
We wanted a forecast API a developer could sign up for in five minutes and actually understand the pricing of, with hyperlocal data good enough to build a real product on.
6 Comments
The shift from pricing on API calls to pricing on locations feels like the strongest insight here.
Curious whether customers understood the location-based pricing immediately, or whether changing the unit made the value clearer but the pricing harder to compare with competing APIs.
Pricing by location instead of API calls makes complete sense, especially for local data. I'm building LocalPatron (Google Business API management for local Business), and local owners think strictly in terms of 'locations/venues'—never API usage. Making them calculate API calls creates friction fast.
Did switching to location-based pricing reduce sales friction right away for you, or did developers still ask for pure usage tiers?
We kept usage-based pricing for developers in the Startup and Standard tiers, since that's still the right unit for anyone building an app or a dashboard. What's new is a Renewables plan for solar and wind forecasting, priced per location, plus some variables specific to that kind of forecast. People had been asking for it for a while and it just makes sense for that use case.
Haven't analysed the data yet, giving it some time. But no complaints so far and subscriptions are coming in.
Sounds like your case is cleaner than ours. A local business owner has one obvious unit and no reason to ever think in API calls. Are you letting them add locations self-serve, or does it turn into a sales conversation?
100% self-serve onboarding. Restaurant owners don't have time for sales calls or complex setups—they just log in, connect their Google profile, and select their location.
From there, the platform prepares everything automatically, but keeps a human-in-the-loop validation step so owners stay in full control before anything goes live on their profile.
Congrats on the early subscriptions rolling in for the Renewables plan! That's a strong validation signal.
Makes sense, and the human-in-the-loop step sounds like the right call given it's their public profile.
For us it's self-serve up to 20 locations, above that we step in and put together a custom offer. And thanks! Good luck with LocalPatron.
Smart hybrid approach—capping self-serve at 20 locations keeps onboarding clean while capturing enterprise upsells.
Appreciate it! Best of luck with the scaling phase as well.