Pricing v2: packs, transparency, 25% annual — Week 1 recap

Over the last 7 days we rewrote AstroWay API’s pricing model. Your existing code keeps working unchanged — every change is additive, nothing breaks. But if you’re integrating now or planning an upgrade, here’s what to know.

PDF reports used to span two tiers — basic (/reports/natal, /reports/synastry, etc.) at 5 000 and “premium” (/reports/transit-yearly, /reports/vedic-kundli, /reports/lal-kitab) at 10 000. This made Reports Pack confusing — actual PDF/mo count depended on the mix.

Now all 12 PDF types charge 5 000 credits/PDF, no exceptions. Reports Pack $99 / 500 000 cr ÷ 5 000 = exactly 100 PDFs/mo regardless of mix.

No price change. A benefit for existing Business subscribers — more headroom for seasonal peaks and AI narratives.

/reports/* (all 12 types) now return 402 PLAN_UPGRADE_REQUIRED for Free keys. Everything else (charts, synastry, transits, AI interpretations, horoscope) stays full on Free.

If your Free key was hitting /reports/ before* — switch to Indie ($5/mo), or use the JSON equivalents (/v1/chart, /v1/synastry) for similar content without the PDF render.

These are horizontal add-ons like HD Pack — restricted access to a single namespace, but cheaper than a full tier:

When to use a pack vs a full tier:

• If your product = Tarot-only + Numerology — Esoteric Pack $9 (200K cr = 20K spreads/mo) beats Indie $5 (50K cr) or Starter $19 (200K cr) — Indie/Starter cover everything, here you only pay for the niche.
• If your product = Indian-market kundli matching — Vedic Pack $19 instead of Starter $19 — same budget, but 5K kundlis/mo vs ~2.5K on Starter (Vedic credits are cheaper here).
• If your product = subscription “1 PDF/$9/mo” per user — Reports Pack $99 for 100 subscribers = $0.99 baseline + white-label included (used to be Enterprise-only).

What packs do NOT cover: Western natal charts, synastry, transits, AI interpretations. If your product mixes genres — go for Starter+ (full access).

Annual discount = 17% (10 months for the price of 12). Unused credits reset to zero at end of monthly cycle.

• Discount 25% (9 months for the price of 12). Yearly: Indie $45, Starter $171, Pro $531, Business $1791, packs $81/$171/$891.
• Credit rollover — unused monthly credits carry over to the next cycle, capped at 1× tier monthly allocation. Annual subscribers only, activated automatically on checkout.

# Month 1: Pro subscriber on $531/yr (= $44/mo effective)
# Spent 600K of 800K → 200K unused
$ curl -i .../v1/chart -H "X-Api-Key: ..."
HTTP/2 200
X-Credits-Used: 20
X-Credits-Limit: 800000
X-Credits-Remaining: 199980
# (no X-Credits-Rollover header — local cycle, nothing rolled over yet)

# Month 2: webhook order.completed fires on renewal
# Old unused (200K) carried over → credits_rolled_over = 200K
$ curl -i .../v1/chart -H "X-Api-Key: ..."
HTTP/2 200
X-Credits-Used: 20
X-Credits-Limit: 1000000          # 800K base + 200K rollover
X-Credits-Remaining: 999980
X-Credits-Rollover: 200000        # ← new header, annual subscribers only

Cap: rollover is bounded at 1× tier monthly allocation — so it can’t grow indefinitely. Pro maxes out at +800K = 1.6M effective limit in any given month.

• Seasonal apps (astro-news spikes hard on retrogrades / new moon).
• Pre-launch development — subscribed early, credits don’t go to waste.
• Agency procurement — single annual invoice + flexibility on usage.

DR-validated: no competitor combines annual discount + rollover + EU billing. AstroWay is the first-mover in this combo.

We launched a public /en/credits/ page with the full breakdown for all 705+ endpoints:

• Sorted by tier (½ — 5 cr → 8 — 10 000 cr)
• Free-tier marker (✓ available / 🔒 requires Indie+)
• Auto-syncs with code — generated on every build from endpoint-costs.ts

DivineAPI / AstrologyAPI / Prokerala don’t publish anything similar — they have a flat 1 cr/call and hide their tier mapping. This is our transparent wedge: you can compute exact $/call before integrating.

We launched a dedicated /en/eu/ page for EU developers building GDPR-sensitive products:

• ✅ EU-only data flow by default (Hetzner Nuremberg) — on all Pro+ keys
• ✅ Standard DPA — not Enterprise-gated, signed via email on the standard Pro $59
• ✅ Anonymized analytics — GA4 with anonymizeIp, no PII in events; Plausible cookie-free on roadmap
• ✅ Right to erasure endpoint — DELETE /v1/me/account

Other astrology APIs (DivineAPI, AstrologyAPI, Prokerala) are US/India-hosted with DPA only on Enterprise. If EU compliance is a hard requirement, Pro $59 is the cheapest path.

Founders’ Lifetime Deal — $299 one-time for Indie tier for life (50 000 credits/mo forever). Capped at 100 customers, then back to standard Indie $5/mo. Launching via AppSumo / IndieHackers / ProductHunt — watch the announcement.

Pricing isn’t “set once and forget”. If your use case doesn’t fit current tiers — email hello@astroway.info; we often solve those with a custom contract before the Enterprise upgrade.

Especially curious about cross-niche use cases — e.g. “product = Tarot + Vedic synastry, where do I subscribe?”. Those are signals for future pack configurations.

Thanks for integrating with AstroWay.