Pay for Databento

Historical data is billed per byte. Databento meters it by its uncompressed size in its own binary encoding, and asking for CSV or JSON instead costs nothing extra — you are charged for the data at the smaller binary size. The delivery method matters a little: a streamed request is billed for every byte that is actually sent, so a dropped connection is not charged for the rest, while a batch download is billed once and can then be downloaded again as many times as you like for 30 days. The portal shows a price estimate for a request before you submit it, and that is the number to check before anything large.

New accounts get $125 in free credits. They can be spent on historical data or put towards the first month of a subscription plan, they are shared across your team, each team gets one set, and they expire six months after signup. Credits are used up before anything is charged to the card, which makes them a real way to test the API on actual data at no cost — but once they run out, usage flows straight onto the card on file.

That is the part to understand before you connect a card. Databento bills in arrears. Each billing cycle is a calendar month; the invoice appears on the first day of the next month and covers every request started up to the last second of the month; and the card is charged five calendar days after the month ends. There is no top-up balance to run down — the whole month’s usage lands on the card in one charge. With a USDT-funded Mehbit card, that means the money has to be on the card around the fifth of each month, and there has to be enough of it for everything you pulled.

If the charge fails, Databento does not wait politely. Its billing guide says the account is put on hold straight away — no new data requests and no downloads of existing datasets — while it retries the card automatically for up to five business days. After that the invoice is marked past due and you have to sort it out with support. Databento itself names insufficient funds near the monthly bill date as a common cause. The best protection is its own monthly limit: under Billing you can set a cap on historical usage and get email warnings as you approach it, and once usage passes the cap further historical requests are blocked. Without a limit the account is unlimited. Note that live data is not covered by this limit.

Two more things before you rely on it. First, we did not find a published refund policy: an invoice can be cancelled only by Databento, on request to its support team, so treat usage as final once you have pulled the data. Second, Databento’s terms bind users to US export law — they prohibit sending its materials to embargoed countries or their nationals and ask you to certify that you are not on US denied-party or sanctions lists. A working card solves the payment step only; eligibility is between you and Databento, so read the terms before you build on it.